Issue Zero

One of my aims as a writer is to let individual objects tell their own stories. 

In his memoir, “Like a Rolling Stone,” Jann Wenner has a chapter called “The Scoop of the Seventies” devoted to the articles Howard Kohn and I co-authored in 1975 about Patty Hearst and the SLA called “The Inside Story.”

For most of the many months part one of our project was in process, it was a secret known only to the two of us and Jann. We were uncertain when we would publish it, partly because Patty and her SLA colleagues were still underground, and we didn’t want to inadvertently help the FBI find them.

We knew so many revealing details about their life underground.

As fate would have it, the FBI located and arrested Hearst and the others on a Thursday in September and publication of our article was set for the following Monday. All hell would be breaking loose upon publication; Jann had arranged for NBC to cover the release exclusively, with the rest of the media invited to the office for what would prove to be a raucous press conference Monday morning.

Jann declared we had “the biggest news story in the world.”

Security was tight.

The entire staff of the magazine was secluded off at a resort near Big Sur for the weekend with the lone exceptions of Howard and me. We stayed in San Francisco to tape our interview with NBC before we headed south to join everyone else.

Finally, late Saturday afternoon, in Jann’s words, “Howard and David made it down…brandishing a copy of the new issue that no one had seen yet.”

A photo of the copy of the magazine we brandished that night is at the top of this post, with the words handwritten up top “Do Not Leave This Lay Around — David.”

So that is how this particular object tells its story. It will celebrate its 48th birthday come September.

LINKS:

• Russia accuses Wagner chief of urging "armed rebellion" (CNN)

• Wagner chief claims to have seized military sites in Rostov as Moscow implements anti-terror measures (Guardian)

• Wagner chief blames war on defence minister (BBC)

• U.S. Navy Heard What It Believed Was Titan Implosion Days Ago (WSJ)

• Supreme Court hands Biden a rare win on immigration enforcement, deportations (USA Today)

• Trump Prosecutors Struggled Over Motives. Then They Heard the Tape. (WSJ)

• Supply chains are back to normal. Why is inflation still so high? (Economist)

• Remote work appears to be here to stay, especially for women (WP)

• The median age in the U.S. reaches a record high, approaching 40 years old (Axios)

• Biden Seeks to Bolster Ties With Modi While Soft-Pedaling Differences (NYT)

• Taliban official letter reinforces bar of female aid staff in southern Kandahar (Reuters)

• Charities say Taliban intimidation diverts aid to Taliban members and causes (NPR)

• The Taliban have launched an impressive new war on drugs (Economist)

• Has COVID’s Patient Zero Finally Been Named? (Atlantic)

• Intelligence report says US split on Covid-19 origins (BBC)

• Companies That Replace People with AI Will Get Left Behind (Harvard Business Review)

• The Last AI Boom Didn't Kill Jobs. Feel Better? (Wired)

• How will AI affect workers? Tech waves of the past show how unpredictable the path can be (The Conversation)

• US-based generative AI job postings up 20% in May, Indeed data show (Reuters)

• Kurt Vonnegut Warned Us About the Dangers of Automation (The Progressive)

• Go Ahead, Try to Explain Milk (Atlantic)

• Rose Byrne on her "Platonic" chemistry with Seth Rogen and the shocking reactions to "Physical" (Salon)

• ‘No Hard Feelings’ shows off Jennifer Lawrence in a raunchy comedy with a deeper core (Salon)

• Company’s New Dress Code Prohibits All Clothing But Little Sailor Suits (The Onion)

The Cycle

One curious facet of modern life is that the attention of people all over the world can be and frequently is focused simultaneously on one dramatic survival story somewhere.

Our inter-linking global communications network is very good at drawing attention to stories like that missing Titanic sub with five occupants, a case that ended tragically Thursday. Or more happily, the mystery of the four Colombian children who were rescued after surviving in the Amazonian jungle on their own for 40 days after their plane crashed.

Two similar survival stories, one with a happy ending, the other one, sad, but both played out with the whole world watching, hanging on every twist and turn.

In the process, what is emerging is a new global culture based on common interpretations of shared narratives around common frames of reference. It’s like listening to the same music, eating the same food, or wearing the same fashions.

Only this part is about how to survive against the odds.

I’m not sure whether any of this will help us solve the very real differences that our separate nations, tribes, religions, ideologies and orientations maintain, but it certainly lays the groundwork for a more unified frame of reference going forward.

After all, the stories we tell ourselves may prove critical in the end to our own chances for survival in an age of climate change. Since we are all in this together, sharing the same stories at least gives us a better chance, one hopes, in the larger existential battle we face as a species.

And it just might be nice if that one turned out to be a story without end.

LINKS:

• With China in mind, Biden and Modi to seal deals from space to chips, 5G to critical minerals (SCMP)

• How India Profits From Its Neutrality in the Ukraine War (NYT)

• Where abortion stands in each state a year since the overturning of Roe v. Wade (ABC)

• A year after fall of Roe, 25 million women live in states with abortion bans or tighter restrictions (AP)

• House fails to overturn Biden veto in effort to cancel student debt relief (The Hill)

• Middle America's 'doom loop' (Insider)

• U.S. Postal Service warning users against sending checks through the mail (CBS)

• Why has America changed its mind on Ukraine joining NATO? (Economist)

• Putin Is Now Very Worried About Crimea (Newsweek)

• Ukrainian missiles struck the Chonhar road bridge connecting Crimea with Russian-held parts of the southern Kherson region overnight, Russian-appointed officials said. (Reuters)

• Zelensky says Russia is planning to sabotage Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant (WP)

• Opinion | The Trump Divide that Should Have Republicans Terrified (Politico)

• Missing Titanic sub crew dead after 'catastrophic implosion' (CNN)

• A top-secret U.S. Navy acoustic system reportedly picked up the sound of the Titan submersible imploding shortly after the vessel vanished Sunday. [AP]

• AI Is an Existential Threat to Itself (Atlantic)

• Military AI’s Next Frontier: Your Work Computer (Wired)

• OpenAI’s CEO Goes on a Diplomatic Charm Offensive (Foreign Policy)

• How AI is reshaping demand for IT skills and talent (CIO)

• Nearly half of US honeybee colonies died last year. Beekeepers struggle to keep the population stable (AP)

• Ecological tipping points could occur much sooner than expected, study finds (Guardian)

• The world’s waste problem is growing fast (Economist)

• UN warns Taliban that restrictions on Afghan women and girls make recognition `nearly impossible’ (AP)

• Nature vs. nurture - what twin studies mean for economics (NPR)

• The stigma around mental health is fading, with celebrities playing a role (WP)

• Library Drops Dewey Decimal System By Organizing All Titles Under ‘B’ For Books (The Onion)

City Stroll

The other day I decided to take a stroll. It was Sunday afternoon and I was in San Francisco, having just finished a nice brunch with my two youngest kids at a little place we like in Noe Valley.

It was Father’s Day.

The kids are 27 and 24, grew up in the city and both currently have jobs there. My son lives on Potrero Hill and works for an international media company headquartered in Japan and my daughter lives in Bernal Heights and works for an art gallery that also exhibits some of her paintings.

During our meal, I asked them what they thought about the barrage of news reports that San Francisco is in the midst of a steep decline, with large retailers leaving the city, supposedly due to rampant homelessness, open drug use on the streets, and a sharp increase in crime.

(I should note that the data don’t actually substantiate those claims.)

“The only place that feels different from the past is downtown,” said my son. “With people working remotely, there are a lot of empty storefronts and far fewer people walking the streets.”

“So you notice the homeless people and those with mental health issues more easily,” added my daughter. “But of course they’ve always been there.”

“It’s the same on Bart and the buses,” said my son. “Fewer people are riding so you notice the troubled ones.”

After the meal we parted and that is when I decided to take my walk across town. I figured I might go a few blocks before stopping and calling for my ride home to the East Bay. But as I wandered, I became fascinated by something that was becoming more obvious block by block.

This part of the city at least was absolutely no different in appearance or feel from the way it has been for many, many years — long before the pandemic and the massive tech layoffs started prompting all of those scary headlines about San Francisco in decline.

Many of the people I passed on the streets were out shopping in the sunny, breezy air and carried bags of small packages. Some walked dogs or held hands with small children.

As I approached a large medical center where another of my sons works, an elderly lady in a wheelchair was talking on the phone. “They asked me so many questions but I didn’t have any answers,” she said. “So here I am.”

Along a quieter block I saw one smallish person sleeping under a blanket next to a backpack and some shoes all tucked neatly into a nook formed by a staircase and the front of a house.

As I reached the Mission District, the visible population increased, since now I’d transitioned from mainly residential to a mainly commercial section. The pedestrians were all ages, shapes and sizes, predominantly Latino or Asian.

A few people nodded at me as we passed; one young man hopped off of his skateboard, smiled and said “Hi.” I said “Hi” back and nodded at several other strangers.

The steady breeze freed a few strands of my long white hair from the elastic band I use to keep it tied back. The sun warming my face reminded me I really should use sunscreen at times like this.

Before I knew it, an hour had passed and I began to feel a bit tired. The parts of the city I was in are flat and perfect for walking, but I’d covered around a mile since leaving the restaurant and was beginning to feel it in my legs.

I stopped outside one of the fruit and vegetable markets where I used to shop when I lived in this neighborhood to pop out my phone and dial the Lyft app for my ride back across the bay.

When the car came, it was piloted by a young woman named Meg. She gestured for me to get in as I heard a horn honking from a vehicle behind her. People don’t honk their horns much in San Francisco, but I didn’t turn to look as I made my way slowly into her vehicle.

As I struggled with the seatbelt Meg pulled back into traffic.

“Sorry to rush you, David, but that was a bus stop where I picked you up and we’re not supposed to stop for passengers in bus stops. It’s a $350 fine. And the bus driver behind us was honking.”

“Oh my, I’m sorry,” I replied. “I didn’t realize it was a bus stop and I didn’t know about that rule.”

When Meg stopped me off in the hills on the other side of San Francisco Bay, I told her that if she got a ticket, she should contact me and I would help her pay it.

“That’s okay. Hopefully the bus driver didn’t take a picture to report me,” she said. “After all, he could see I was picking up an elderly person.”

It’s odd to hear yourself described as elderly, even though that’s precisely what I am — mid-seventies to be slightly more precise. As she pulled away. I thought about how deceptive a picture the press coverage has painted of a city I love.

Are there serious problems with homelessness, drug use and mental illness over there? Sure but there long have been and they are mainly confined to a few areas like the Tenderloin, which hasn’t changed much since the 1880’s, as we know from the novels of Frank Norris.

Furthermore, that emptiness downtown my kids described is present in many large cities these days. It too will pass with time, as San Francisco has always been a town of boom and bust cycles and you can already see the stirrings of the next boom, probably fueled this time around by AI.

No, San Francisco is not in decline, IMHO. It’s just as complicated as ever and downright vibrant out in the dozens of neighborhoods where most of its residents live. So don’t believe everything you read, unless of course you happen to be reading the musings of a reasonably coherent elderly person.

LINKS:

• China hits out at US after Joe Biden calls Xi Jinping a ‘dictator’ (Financial Times)

• Judge Strikes Down Arkansas Law Banning Gender Transition Care for Minors (NYT)

• The new Trump acolyte no one saw coming: Nancy Mace (Politico)

• Garland pushes back on accusations of DOJ bias following Hunter Biden plea agreement (CNN)

• House GOP votes to censure Schiff over role in Trump investigations (Politico)

• National test scores plunge, with still no sign of pandemic recovery (WP)

• The sleeper legal strategy that could topple abortion bans (Politico)

• OceanGate Was Warned of Potential for ‘Catastrophic’ Problems With Titanic Mission (NYT)

• ‘Secret Invasion’ Opening Credits Generated By AI, Prompting Backlash From Audiences (Deadline)

• AI reveals ancient symbols hidden in Peruvian desert (Fox)

• Toyota will use AI to maximize future EV range (Electrek)

• Bill Gates’ venture firm, with backing from Jeff Bezos and Jack Ma, just minted a $1 billion A.I. unicorn that uses machine learning for mining rare earth metals crucial for EVs (Fortune)

• Apple Is an AI Company Now (Atlantic)

• Germany’s biggest newspaper is cutting 20% of jobs as it prepares for an AI-powered digital future (CNN)

• ‘A moment of revolution’: Schumer unveils strategy to regulate AI amid dire warnings (NBC)

• AI Answers the Age-Old Question: What Came First, the Chicken or the Egg? (Yahoo)

• Phoenix is emerging as the city of the future (Axios)

• Glaciers across the Hindu Kush Himalayan mountain ranges could lose up to 80% of their volume this century if greenhouse gas emissions aren’t sharply reduced, according to a report. One Indian mountain town began sinking this year. [AP]

• Ocean heat is off the charts – here’s what that means for humans and ecosystems around the world (The Conversation)

• Japan plans to "aggressively" push for women's participation in society, top government spokesperson Hirokazu Matsuno said after an annual report showed the country was struggling to narrow the gender gap (Reuters)

• In limbo in Indonesia, Afghan women find they ‘can be a boss’ (Al Jazeera)

• Putin Talks Tough While Ukraine Makes Gains (Atlantic)

• Ancient Maya city discovered in Mexican jungle (Reuters)

• The scientific search for the origin of covid-19 (Economist)

• U.S. Intelligence Agencies May Never Find Covid’s Origins, Officials Say (NYT)

• Charitable giving in 2022 drops for only the fourth time in 40 years: Giving USA report (AP)

• Department Of Transportation Announces $1 Billion Investment In Horses (The Onion)

 

Dad's Story IV

(This is the fourth of four parts)

Digging further into my father’s unpublished novel, I finally learned significant details about the tragic end of Joe’s wife Helen.

After their only son, Timmy drowned in a boating accident, Helen went into a deep depression, and started “hitting the bottle.” Finally, she drove her car off a cliff, committing suicide. 

But my father made a side note in his manuscript that he should remember to devote a chapter describing how hard it must have been on her being alone at home, trying to cope after Timmy’s death, while Joe was back at the office full-time. 

The tragic events in Dad’s novel never occurred in our nuclear family, but we did lose a few close relatives during my childhood to car accidents. And my mother did have an extended period of emotional distress when we relocated to another city due to my Dad’s transfer and this coincided with my boyhood illness as well.

The heart infection I experienced went undiagnosed for two years, doing its damage, after our family doctor told my Dad (with me sitting right there), “It’s just psychological — it’s all in his mind.”

My Dad initially believed that. And I didn’t blame him because I believed it too. 

When it turned out that I had indeed been seriously ill the whole time, and had to be hospitalized with pneumonia in very bad condition, my father must have experienced an awful wave of guilt.

But I digress. Back to my father’s story.

After Helen’s suicide, Joe put in for a leave from work, and implemented his elaborate plan to travel deep into the wilderness. I’m not sure where this was, exactly, but it probably was somewhere in Canada or Alaska.

Joe made lists of everything he would need, hired a charter pilots, and hiked deep into the area until he found an island with a narrow gorge leading to a perfect swimming hole and granite steps up to the mouth of a mysterious cave.

As near as I can tell, Joe’s goal was to prove to himself that he could survive under difficult circumstances in the wild, fending for himself, while exploring virgin lands, or conducting mysterious experiments, or seeking some sort of closure before returning to his humdrum workaday life.

He was trying to get over some very hard stuff, but he was excited by the challenge.

Among Dad’s papers is a drawing of the area where Joe seems to have at least temporarily found what he was seeking.

I hope that he did.

(End of story.)

LINKS:

• Hunter Biden will plead guilty in a deal that likely averts time behind bars in a tax and gun case (AP)

• McCarthy doubles down on Biden family probes after Hunter guilty plea deal (The Hill)

• Trump classified documents trial date set for Aug. 14 (CNBC)

• Trump offers dizzying new justifications for classified documents as former Cabinet secretaries sound the alarm (CNN)

• Trump Real Estate Deal in Oman Underscores Ethics Concerns (NYT)

• Well-funded Christian group behind US effort to roll back LGBTQ+ rights (Guardian)

• Mass shootings leave dead and injured across the US, including at least 60 shot in the Chicago area (AP)

• Search for submersible missing near Titanic wreck hits critical stage (WP)

• AI Is a Lot of Work (The Verge)

• AI Is Winning the AI Race (Foreign Policy)

• How existential risk became the biggest meme in AI (MIT)

• Biden meets with AI experts in effort to manage its risks (NBC)

• How artificial intelligence is helping us talk to animals (BBC)

• OpenAI Lobbied the E.U. to Water Down AI Regulation (Time)

• Gannett sues Google, alleges online ad monopoly (Reuters)

• Scientists on Twitter head for the exit (Axios)

• Our roofs could help to cool down the world. How? By making them “cool roofs.” This technology reflects heat into space, which could lower energy use, save lives and offset some global warming. (WP)

• The climate crisis is on track to push one-third of humanity out of its most livable environment (Grist)

• Why China still refuses to resume military dialogue with US, despite Antony Blinken’s latest appeal (SCMP)

• Taliban treatment of women could be ‘gender apartheid’: UN expert (Al Jazeera)

• Russian air strikes hit Kyiv, other Ukrainian cities far from front lines (Reuters)

• The Tropicana, a Relic on the Las Vegas Strip, Could Be Demolished (NYT)

• Mushroom Cloud Hopefully Nothing Major (The Onion)

 

Dad's Story III

(This is the third of four parts.)

This business of piecing together my father’s unpublished writings is getting complicated. As I figure out how to put the pages in order, and discover more side notes, outlines, and hand-written parts, I realize the whole thing ties together into a draft of what he envisioned would eventually be a book.

It was to be a semi-self-biographical novel about a man named Joe dreaming of escaping from his conventional life after a series of overwhelming personal tragedies. 

The man’s only son, Timmy, dies in the story, but so does Joe’s wife, Helen. This was another shocker for me.

I haven’t located the explanation for Helen’s demise yet, but there’s a long section where she is utterly inconsolable over Timmy’s death. Soon after that we just learn she too is gone.

Part of the issue here is Dad’s papers when I found them were badly out of order, some numbered, some not, as if they had been stuffed away at several different times. Perhaps he wanted the project to be kept a secret, but the end result is confusion on my part.

Near the bottom of the pile of pages, Helen and Timmy are suddenly alive again. Joe is 45, Helen 39, and their beloved daughter (possibly named Julie?) lives out in L.A. and had a daughter of her own, who sounds quite delightful.

We also learn that Joe’s son Timmy was a delightful child as well. He was full of energy, walking, running and talking at exceptionally early ages, always falling down and getting up again, keeping going, though his head was usually “black and blue.”

Sounds like he was mistake-prone.

There is a parallel story developing at Joe’s office, where an important guy named John T. Lewis — later corrected by pencil as Joseph T. Gallagher — shows up and is making a serious presentation when an interruption comes in the form of a phone call.

Gallagher can barely control his anger at this disruption.

This turns out to be the frantic phone call that Timmy has been in the fatal boating accident, which irritates Joseph T. Gallagher.

(This whole saga is starting to remind me of a Bob Dylan song where the only order is disorder.)

The business section of the novel is pretty boring, to be frank, and has to do mainly with failed attempts to acquire various other companies. 

But I might understand more about the overall arc of the narrative if I could force myself to read a long, long, long section where a whole bunch of the main characters engage in an incredibly detailed round of golf.

There’s some guy named Mort, another one called Bill, and so on. Joe’s wife Helen is there as well with her beautiful golf swing. The score is tied at some point, and there’s all this detail about tees, playing through, putting and the mechanics of the game of golf, which I confess never has been able to stir the depths of passion in my soul like it clearly did for my Dad.

So maybe some answers as to what this is all about are buried in the rough there, such as Helen getting a hole in one, or perhaps getting hit in the head and killed by an errant shot from Joseph T. Gallagher. 

Anyway, it is after Timmy and Helen have died that the narrative picks up again. Joe starts plotting his secret escape into the wilderness. Using a false name, so he couldn’t be tracked, he charters a flight somewhere deep into the mountains, where he is going to conduct a mysterious scientific experiment.

What I don’t understand is why this all has to be a secret.

TO BE CONTINUED

LINKS:

• Sub still missing as Titanic wreckage site becomes focus of frantic search and rescue operation (CBS)

• Spy balloon 'chapter should be closed’ after China talks — Blinken (NBC)

• Xi rejects US offer to set up military crisis hotline, Blinken says (The Hill)

• Ukraine at war: the counter-offensive gains pace (Economist)

• Russia Sought to Kill Defector in Florida (NYT)

• Judge orders Trump not to disclose evidence in classified documents (ABC)

• What Can We Do About Pandemic-Related Learning Loss? (New Yorker)

• Tech-Stock Boom Pits AI Against the Fed (WSJ)

• How generative AI is creating new classes of security threats (VentureBeat)

• AI and media companies negotiate landmark deals over news content (Financial Times)

• Comedians asked ChatGPT to write jokes. ‘The humor comes from how bad the AI is.’ (WP)

• Will AI make us stupid? (Guardian)

• A useful new AI app transcribes and summarizes your voice notes (Fast Company)

• ‘Like something out of Black Mirror’: Police robots go on patrol at Singapore airport (CNN)

• After a Winter Deluge, California Rivers Are Too Dangerous to Enjoy (NYT)

• Researchers are discovering ‘zombie forests’ in new places across the western U.S. — here’s what makes that so concerning (Yahoo)

• A tropical disturbance 1,000 miles west of the African coast is expected to grow stronger in the coming days. It could threaten the Caribbean by the end of the week. (WP)

• Titanic tourist submersible goes missing with search under way (BBC)

• Apple Is Taking On Apples in a Truly Weird Trademark Battle (Wired)

• How to Know Your Neighbors (Atlantic)

• Area Woman Said ‘Sorry’ 118 Times Yesterday (The Onion)

 

Dad's Story II

(This is the second of four parts.)

Reading further into my father’s old writings, which I wish I could carbon-date, but probably were created anytime from the 1960s through the 1980s, I discovered a shocking turn of events in what appears to have been his main short story, or attempt at a novel.

I should begin by saying that these pages seem to have been stashed haphazardly and probably were a project or projects he started and stopped over a period of years, perhaps decades. It is not clear to me whether the pages conflate several stories or fantasies, but I seriously doubt he ever showed them to anybody.

After he died in 1999, my mother asked me to empty his things into a box and take them away. She didn’t wish to go through them herself. This week is the first time I’ve ever looked at them carefully.

Anyway, the writing is very clearly autobiographical; he didn’t stray far from the contours of his own life. His main character “Joe” has a corporate job that he tolerates in order to support his family, a pretty wife he adores but who perhaps misunderstands him, several lovely daughters he dotes on, and finally a son.

In real life that was his reality and the only son was me. But in the story he names the kid Timmy. 

(By contrast, I was named after his father, who died when Dad was only ten. So of course I never met the original David Weir, since I didn’t show up until some two decades after he passed away.)

I was sort of thrilled to find myself in Dad’s story, albeit in fiction, but quickly noticed that Timmy somehow seemed to more like a figment of Joe’s imagination than an actual boy. The narrator describes what he thought Timmy might be like when he reached high-school age and expects him to be athletic. Of course in real life fathers often imagine the life their sons will lead when they’re small, so this didn’t seem all that strange.

Still, I had an odd sense of foreboding as I read about Tommy in the story. He never really seemed to be there.

I also was distracted by some of my father’s side notes, or annotations, describing ways this story (or stories) might possibly proceed. Sometimes the thread was about escaping his domesticated life into the wilderness; other parts just continued with the mundane realities of suburban life. 

Partly I feared finding something dreadful, like a secret love affair or a crime that would have been a thinly veiled confession that I most certainly would not want to know about.

But there was only a passing reference to “an encounter w/Indian girl in the wilderness,” which was never explained.

Most of all, I was wondering how my stand-in Timmy would turn out. A star athlete perhaps? A successful journalist? A gallant leader of the community? 

Well that turned out to be the really big shocker in the story.

Because one day little Timmy just dies! 

I did not see that one coming.

Right about the age of twelve, he falls out of a boat, hits his head on a log and drowns in a lake. The little guy seems to have been out there on his own without Joe, who was at work.

Returning to reality for a moment, and trying not to take Timmy’s demise too personally, I remembered a few incidents from my youth that might be relevant. On one occasion, my best friend Mark and I were horsing around in a motorboat and flipped it, casting us and all of our fishing gear (including my Dad’s) into the lake.

We limped home, somewhat chagrined, because it was a big deal to have lost that fishing equipment. But my Dad simply put on a snorkel and some flippers and went out to the spot in the lake, dove in and recovered his gear.

On another occasion, Mark and I were fishing in a cove at Ludington State Park when we discovered a dead man floating in the lagoon. The dead man had white hair like my Dad’s. That time there was nothing to be done about it.

Anyway, I was shocked that my father decided to kill little Timmy off in his story. I thought he was a likable little guy, plus it was such a dark turn. I always thought of my Dad as the ultimate optimist.

Still trying to process this tragic news, I kept on reading. The story goes forward without much looking back on Timmy at all, actually. As near as I could tell Joe doesn’t seem all that broken up by Timmy’s demise. 

(Maybe my father took a break from writing the story for a stretch and when he picked it up again, simply forgot Timmy had died?)

Who knows. Anyway, when Joe vacations in San Francisco, tours Fisherman’s Wharf, and generally does the stuff that my Dad actually did with me in the 1970s, he seems carefree and content.

Soon after that, the story starts wandering off toward the sunset, so I have stopped reading it, for now. 

***

P.S. When I told my oldest daughter about the tragic saga of little Timmy, she shrugged and reminded me of the fact that I almost died at about age 12 from an undiagnosed heart infection, and never really had a fully normal childhood after that. I couldn't play sports, for example, which my Dad had hoped for, and escaped into reading, fantasy worlds and writing instead. Perhaps this affected him in ways I never fully considered until now.

(TO BE CONTINUED)

LINKS:

• Xi, Blinken agree to stabilise U.S.-China relations in rare Beijing talks (Reuters)

• Blinken arrives in Beijing amid deep fissures in U.S.-China relations (WP)

• At least 20 people shot, 1 fatally, at Juneteenth celebration near Chicago: Sheriff (ABC)

• Mass shooting near Washington State music festival leaves at least 2 dead (NBC)

• Scathing Report on Police Leaves Minneapolis Reeling 3 Years After Floyd Murder (NYT)

• How government rules for classified papers could help Trump delay his trial (WP)

• House GOP flirts with Jan. 6 extremism (Politico)

• To fight Putin, Russian militias aid Ukraine with cross-border attacks (WP)

• Ukraine Hits Russian Ammunition Depot Deep in Occupied Territory (WSJ)

• Why It Seems Everything We Knew About the Global Economy Is No Longer True (NYT)

• Generative AI will upend the professions (Financial Times)

• These are the 3 biggest fears about AI. Do they really stack up? (Insider)

• AI: The worst-case scenario (The Week)

• Humans Aren’t Mentally Ready for an AI-Saturated ‘Post-Truth World’ (Wired)

• Killer Whales Are Not Our Friends (Atlantic)

• ‘Fruits, seeds and water’ were pivotal in keeping four children alive in the Amazon rainforest (CNN)

• ‘The Fires Here Are Unstoppable’ (NYT)

• America’s paternity leave patchwork (Axios)

• Pew Research Center is tired of blaming Gen Z and millennials for everything—it’s retiring the whole concept of generational framing (Fortune)

• Report: 97% Of Inner Tube Occupants Agree It Doesn’t Get Any Better Than This (The Onion)

 

Dad's Story

(This Father’s Day I retell the first of four parts in a series of essays about a discovery I made last summer.)

Squirreled away in one of my boxes of old files I found a portfolio of papers left behind by my father. It must have fallen into my hands in the days following his death from a stroke in 1999.

There’s a small notebook that he took with him when he joined the Army Air Corps in October 1942. He reported to Fort Custer in Michigan, the shipped out to Keesler Field in Mississippi, on to the Tech School Squadron in Chicago, and ultimately to the Aviation Cadet Center in San Antonio before going overseas.

He never saw action in the war. He did see the aftermath of war, however, in France and Germany, and as a stenographer at the war crimes tribunal at Nuremberg.

In the inside cover of his journal, he documented his promotions from PVT to PFC to CPL to SGT, etc. On the very first page is a faded B&W photo of his Mom, then one of my big sister Nancy (10 years older than me), then the first of many shots of our mother — mainly of her taking golf swings — plus his own three sisters, a 1930s car, one of his his brothers, two of his brothers-in-law, and some Army buddies and their wives and a few of him fishing.

He loved to fish.

He must have thumbed through this many, many times while away from home.

Although he told me stories about his life, I never was fully able in imagine what it had been like for him, born in 1916, growing up on a small farm in Canada, the youngest of six kids, losing his father at the age of ten, then leaving the farm with his mother to live in town (London, Ontario) for a short while, before on to Detroit as “nickel immigrants.”

Five cents was the cost of crossing the river on the ferry in the 1920s, and therefore pretty much the cost of citizenship in the USA — for those of the right European descent.

Because he was the youngest, it turned out that my father outlived all of hIs siblings, surviving just longer than his sister Norma, who passed away a year before him. Accordingly, he ended up with many of his siblings’ official documents — birth certificates, an application for citizenship in the U.S., a social security card, wedding certificates, photos, and finally, their death certificates.

Two of his sisters died with no other surviving relatives, so he became the sole custodian of their life chronicles.

What am I do with this stuff?

As far as I can tell, none of my Dad’s siblings left any writings behind to document their lives — no journals or letters, just a few faded photographs and those yellowed documents.

My Dad was another matter, however. Inside a manilla folder marked “Manuscript” he left a combination of handwritten and typed pages, apparently a short story or novel that he started to write. There are notes, an outline, and a certain amount of narrative.

If memory serves, this may be the story about a man’s escape into the north woods, where he survives on his skills as a fisherman.

Early in his story, there is this: “The world is divided into two kinds of people, those who must fish and those who can’t understand.” I haven’t read very far into the manuscript yet, but I believe a woman shows up with a great golf swing.

While the manuscript may never qualify as the Great American Novel, it will definitely be of interest to us, his descendants. And I’ll say this about my father — he would have made a hell of a contestant on that television series “Alone.”

(TO BE CONTINUED)

LINKS:

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• The Age of Chat — The new A.I. systems pretend to converse with us. But who’s writing the script? (New Yorker)

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