Fears and Heroes

Today, somehow a man landed a passenger jet in the Hudson River. All of his passengers survived.

Like most people, I am always scared when I have to fly. It is all too obvious that my fate lies in the hands of the person in control of the craft.

This pilot is a hero.

-30-

Swimming Upstream in Today's World

There is an old tale popular in non-profit circles, one I first heard from the venerable Anwar Fazal, the Malaysian activist who, as much as any other person, has inspired me over the past many decades in my effort to try and balance professional journalism with a social conscience.

The story, as I recall it, goes like this. You are standing next to a river, when you notice a drowning baby being swept by the current, so you step in, grab her, dry her off, and place her safely on the ground next to you.

Just then, out of the corner of your eye, you spot another drowning baby. You save him, and then, you spot yet another...

The point of this story is that you can spend a lifetime saving drowning babies without ever getting the chance to move up-river and find out who the hell is throwing these kids into the river in the first place.

The role of a journalist, in our society, is to be that person who makes it up-river. This work is hard, and even when you do it well, you are more likely to make new enemies than friends.

A lifetime spent in the craft has taught me that many among us do not want to know the scientific truth so much as they want their own conclusions to be confirmed.

But we journalists have no such luxury. To do our work well, we cannot simply substantiate our theories about how we would like to think this world works. We have to take into account each new piece of evidence we discover, particularly when it challenges our working theory, if we are to maintain our integrity.

In this way, we are like scientists, testing a hypothesis, gathering evidence, pushing to the point where we can publish our findings. We even have a version of peer review (called fact-checking) that, at least traditionally, acts as a check on any excesses we might otherwise assert.

Yet, then again, sadly, the process I describe is by and large now from bygone days. There are few fact-checkers left, not to mention copy editors, real editors, or any of the others who traditionally helped us achieve our best published findings and avoid our worst mistakes.

Today, more often than not, it's just us and our readers, unvarnished, unfiltered. As a lifelong writer, I don't mind this direct access to my readers, but I'm also aware that those others who used to help me have fallen silent, perhaps in ways that do not serve my readers' best interests.

And that makes me sad.

-30-

Home Town Boy's Latest (not last) Hurrah

Along with any complaints I might have about living in San Francisco, lo, these many years (37+), I have to admit that for the most part, the local press has been very kind to me.

They often write nice stories when I get jobs, and they almost always write nice stories later on when I lose those jobs.

Today, a reporter for the SF Weekly, Peter Jamison, posted a very kind and thoughtful piece about my latest transition.

When you've been around and active in the same profession for as long as I have, you've crossed roads with so many others, many briefly, perhaps only once, that even with Facebook and LinkedIn, you could never re-establish ties with all of them. But a particular concern of mine my whole adult life as been the fate of quality journalism -- and most particularly, the fate of young journalists.

My oldest child is a journalist, a very good one. But she's found it tough to make much money over the years, regardless of her skill and eloquence as a writer. Many of my former students and interns have stayed in touch over the years, and I am aware of how many struggles they have endured trying to practice this profession, which really is essential if we are to build a great democracy out of the present, most imperfect union.

I've often fantasized about being once again in the position to hire and manage a staff of journalists, because there simply are so many good, decent people who enter this battered profession for all the right reasons. Forget the screamers you witness of TV, they are not journalists, they are performers.

They pretend to report by putting on camouflage in some Third World venue or standing on a beach in fancy foul-weather gear as a tropical storm approaches. But they never stay, and only rarely do they return to cover the aftermath. There are, mind you, serious reporters on TV, (such as my former student Michell Won in NYC) but they are not the people I'm dissing here.

One name: Geraldo.

Case closed.

Nope, many of the reporters we should be worried about toil away inside the daily and weekly newspapers in our communities, the radio stations (especially NPR affiliates), or in non-profits like the Center for Investigative Reporting. You may not know these people's names but they are the vital eyes and ears of our democracy. So, here's a question: Given the dismal state of their employers, how are we going to help ensure their voices don't fall silent?

-30-

New Beginnings, New Games

It's easy to see why for so many of us California is a land of magic. Not only can you pursue dreams that may seem unachievable elsewhere here, you'll probably meet a movie star or two, make more money than you thought possible, and eat the best fruits and vegetables available on this continent.

Furthermore, whenever you may feel down and out, new growth springs out of our rich soils, reminding you that life renews itself, season after season, regardless what we mere humans do to mess things up.



Today was an incredibly warm day with temps in the 70s. Tonight's was a lovely sunset. The rest of this post is devoted to photos of my athletic son's futsol and basketball triumphs yesterday and today.

These gave me more pleasure than I can express. Have you thought about why games matter? Because we are hard-wired to learn through playing games. Games are a vital part of how we have evolved, not to mention how we continue to evolve, as a species.

Games are at least as important as school, work, or love. Think about that.









His team won these games, thanks in no small part to his play. The best part of tonight's basketball victory was Aidan played point guard the entire second half with the four substitute players who usually sit on the bench. His job was to distribute the ball to each of them so they got some chances to score baskets. Before the game was over, he'd succeeded and his grin was as wide as I've ever seen it.

Everybody on the team had scored. The final tally was 29-7 and their team is now 4-0 for the season.

-30-

This Blogger's For Hire*

* This post is best read while listening to a certain Bruce Springsteen song. Please email me if you don't recognize which one I am referring to...)

Those of you who are long-time readers of this blog probably recall that I chose to violate a long-held journalistic rule and come out strongly for Barack Obama for President more than a year ago now. But I did so mainly with my writing. I didn't donate money (I never have to any candidate), and beyond some insipid sign-posting (which made me feel silly) I did no organizing work to help him get elected.

But I did write, and I circulated those writings far and wide, especially among conservatives and Christians that I know or whom I am are related to. What I got in response, not surprisingly, was an in-box filled with hateful messages, as if mere words could somehow unleash an ugliness that, at least in public, has been mostly hidden in this society for years now.

That didn't bother me, except for the nasty words and sentiments various friends and relatives, all of whom I treasure, added to the pile-on. At some point, I realized that my thoughts and feelings about this election were not welcome, because they triggered deeply suppressed fears these people are living with that make the devils hounding my tortured mind look like bathtub toys.

It's already three days since I was laid off, or, depending on how you view these things, liberated from my most recent job. To quote James Brown, "I feel fine." What surprises me is that I feel no bitterness, no regret, and no anger about this development. I knew when I took the job that it would most likely last only 6-12 months.

It lasted around eight.

Back when Predictify hired me, there were hints that an economic collapse was coming, but only in the form of those low, dark storm clouds every resident of the Gulf Coast is all too familiar with.

During the periods when I lived in Florida, we always recognized the violent anger those clouds potentially portended. But we also knew that more times than not, that violence was inflicted elsewhere, and all we felt was the echo.

This recession became visible last September. By then, I'd been on the job at Predictify for four months, half of my eventual total. We'd not only launched a home page, we'd begun iterating on it.

Never since Wired had I experienced an engineering team capable of moving so quickly as this one did. The site improved monthly, then weekly, then daily. The call "we are pushing," indicating yet another new release, became almost a daily experience.

I love those guys and how hard they are working. They are like the spawning salmon, swimming upstream in rivers where human intervention is so pervasive it is more like running an unnatural gamut than doing what nature has programmed them to do.

Will this little company survive and prevail? I hope so, even if it is too late for me to benefit from their success.

***

That was merely my introduction, dear reader.

Yesterday's post was sent to the Obama transition team as a "personal story," in the hope that somebody with influence might read it and recognize there is an opportunity to help millions of hard-working, older Americans of modest means right now. It requires very little money, but it would put all of us back in the employment pool, ready to help, even at vastly lower paying positions than we are used to.

My idea would turn willing senior citizens into an army of Vista/Peace Corps volunteers, much as we agreed to be 48 years ago, when we were young, and the last truly inspirational President took office.

***

That was Act Two.

Here is the meaning of this day's post. I want to secure a job that lasts at least for a little while, that matters, in a big way. I want to put whatever skills I may have to work on behalf of a cause much bigger than myself.

Politically, I am an Obama supporter, but I am neither a liberal, a conservative, a libertarian, a centrist, or any other known label. Let's just say I'm a pragmatist, and that is precisely why I responded to Obama's message.

I would like to work for the Obama administration, in whatever position it deems appropriate. In that context, today, I applied for a job at http://www.change.gov.

Will you support me in this quest? If so, please let me know and I will find a way to let the transition team know mine is not a quixotic quest, but one backed by real Americans, the kind of people, who like me, are proud to drive a car made in the USA, and would happily join the CIA in order to help catch bin-Laden, but who also believe that a progressive, compassionate political agenda is the only moral choice acceptable in this, the richest nation on earth.

-30-

A New Idea for President Obama

Like many people my age, for years I have scrimped in order to put away as much as I could in whatever IRA or 401(k) my employer offered. This past year was no different. For most of the time I was employed, I diverted 5% of my salary every month to the company retirement plan. (I stopped when I realized that I was losing money, dramatically, by doing so.)

By the end of the year, I added up my retirement accounts, like I always do, to discover a horrifying fact: My various accounts had cumulatively lost 50% of their value. Now these were not marginal funds. I chose mainstream mutual funds for my money. I read their prospectuses, I checked their ratings on Morningstar, I read their propaganda, including the fine print.

I thought I had chosen wisely. Until recently, I used to email my older kids about the main fund, which I try to manage myself, through Schwab. As for the risk/gain ratio, I chose medium to low risk over and over. But now, I would be humiliated to share with them what has happened to my account. In short, it is less than what I originally started with!

So, what went wrong? Why now, as I add up the damage, is my retirement fund only worth half of what it was on December 31, 2007?

Of course, I know I am not alone. Many, many people have experienced a similar fate. So, my personal idea for the new President is very simple...take a snapshot of every American's retirement account as of 12/31/07 and compare it with 12/31/08. If the person withdrew funds, reduce the "at risk" total accordingly.

Then, make a very simple gesture. Simply reimburse these savers for their losses. You can create a cap on this benefit; perhaps only reimburse those of us who are "small investors," at whatever definition seems appropriate. Given other programs that have been discussed, this benefit might only apply to the first $250,000 in any individual's retirement accounts.

To be explicit, if I had been able to save $250,000 through the end of '07 and it now was worth only $125,000, I would get a check for $125,000 that could only be used to rebuild my retirement accounts.

This program should probably be available only for older Americans -- perhaps those 50 and older. Why? Because younger people should have enough time for the market to rebuild their losses. In any event, it's a long time before they will need to tap into their retirement funds, hopefully, unlike those of us who were born in the '40s or '50s.

Our crisis is now. I doubt this proposal would amount to very much cash, in the overall scheme of things. Perhaps some economist somewhere could calculate the total. Plus, it is a highly selective idea; not everyone would benefit, not any of the neediest among us.

But I trust other stimulus packages will be devoted to the working poor. My concern tonight is the aging working middle class. This past year has destroyed our faith in the American economic model. We are the people who, rather than using plastic to go deeply into debt, tried to live within our means and set aside anything non-essential for the future, when we could no longer be as economically productive.

This may not be the demographic that is the new President's top priority, but it is one that deserves a "bailout" at least as much as GM, Citibank, or Freddie Mac.

Otherwise, all too soon, we will be joining the poor, swelling their ranks, even though for all of our adult lives we have been middle class people, consuming and keeping our economy strong. Now it is not economy that is vulnerable, because it will rebound, but those of us who have built it.

We are older. We are tired. We are disheartened. We still have lots to give. As for me, if I hadn't lost so much of my savings, now that I am once again unemployed. teaching might be a possibility. I am a good teacher, very experienced and motivated.

But given how much my future security has shrunk, I cannot even consider such a low-paid option. There are many like me.

Think about it.

All the Silent People

I'd forgotten how long and quiet a day could be. Luckily, I had an errand, which required taking a morning walk. Maybe I wasn't ready for prime-time yet. I found myself, uncharacteristically, avoiding people's eyes. I just trudged along with my face down.

Why is it, in our society and perhaps others as well, that the person laid-off from his job gets hit with such a bad bout of low self-esteem. As if the reality isn't bad enough.

There usually is a way out of this downward spiral, however, as I have found (through experience, much too much experience for that matter. It's invariably about connecting with others, even if only briefly.

Leaving the second of the two banks that I had to visit today, I heard a sound behind me. Glancing around, I saw that a small, elderly, African-American woman, who was also intent on leaving the bank, pushing her walker in front of her.

This particular bank, for no particular reason I can imagine, has a series of three doors one must pass through whenever entering or exiting. Of course, I held the first door for this woman, who glanced up at me and said, "Why, thank you, sir."

At the second door, I pointed out to her that "It says this is automatic but there's nothing automatic about it, is there."

"No, there isn't," she said, "and thank you once again."

I moved ahead to open the third and final door leading to our mutual return to freedom.

"Okay, now I can send you on your way, Ma'am," I quipped. She beamed at me a moment, and said, "I hope you have a very nice day."

So I did.

-30-