My Musical Genius (Who Insists He Isn't)

I have a kid who hates any kind of public attention. Thus he hates to perform in plays, he hates giving speeches, he hates pretty much any situation that places him in the eye of others.

On the other hand, he (like all of us) can only avoid being seen for who we really are for a limited period of time. Just being alive and on the planet means you'll be noticed.

The cliche is "don't hide your light under the bushel." (The final word is often shortened to "bush" in colloquial American.)

But so many special people try to do that, at all ages and stages.

In fact, it is the shyest kids who invariably turn out to be the most interesting adults, on many levels.

As much as I respect those who somehow are born with, or acquire, superior social skills, I also have to say that the deepest spirits, the oldest souls, the most intriguing people I've encountered along the way were, at least as children awkward, unsure, and probably just sort of weird.

Although he would disagree, I know that my little guy is deeply gifted as a musician. He doesn't understand how good he is because there is not enough social value around this particular skill from his peers for him to let that information in.

You know the best part about today? His big brother, whose gifts are in athletics, was even more nervous than he was. He sat upstairs in the balcony, worrying, waiting for his little brother to take the stage.

When he finally did, he was masterful. If you like music, or even if you don't, please watch this clip and tell me what you think. Remember, since it is at YouTube, to let the whole clip load before you try to watch it, for a better viewing experience.



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My Little Ecologist

In my youth, I was an activist for many causes. Pro-civil rights, anti-war, pro-women's rights, pro-gay rights, anti-grand-jury abuse...but my first and truest cause, the one that has endured my entire life was, is, and always will be environmentalism.

To me, wandering free through nature was the greatest pleasure of my childhood. I was a lonely child, not because I never had friends, but probably because I was a loner by nature.

My natural love has always been for trees, plants, birds, fish, other animals, the sky, clouds...Of course I love people, too, but my feelings toward people are complicated by the way we, collectively, treat our common planet.

This is why the so-called "debate" over climate change is so offensive. It really doesn't matter how much our role as an obscenely over-populated species has contributed to the indisputable warming of Earth.

What matters is that we have not treated our home with respect.

My youngest child probably knows very little about the earlier stages of my career. I do not show my kids my books or articles, unless they ask. That work occurred a long time ago.

But, in her own powerful way, she is an activist who wants to make an impact on environmental grounds. She's only eleven. She's already a vegetarian. She also likes to use the visual arts to express her beliefs.

So this is the work she did today. It adorns our front fence, as the photos below capture.





Back when there were hippies, stoned on dope but aware of karma, everyone would say, "what goes around, comes around." I hope that is true.

At least in my little world, it feels true tonight.

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What if we could all just switch sides?

Lots of people come here to give talks. It's like that in all big cities, but a citizen seriously committed to finding out as much as possible about a wide variety of topics could do a lot worse than sample what our city has to offer.

At San Francisco's Commonwealth Club Monday night, for example, a panel debated "The Future of Books."

One of the speakers was Dan Clancy, who is the chief engineer at Google Books, which is a controversial effort to scan millions of out of print books and make them available in digital form to anyone who wants to access them. (Most will have to be bought, but some will be free.)

One of the most prominent opponents of a proposed settlement of a class-action suit against this Google effort is Dr. Pamela Samuelson of U-C, Berkeley. She has demonstrated in a series of interventions how Google and the parties to the lawsuit could improve it for the good of all, but have not done so.

Clancy and Samuelson have obviously met often in public debating this issue and remain cordial and respectful toward one another. But they are also on an intellectual collision course, as the case wends its way through the courts.

Watching these two impressive people struggle with the issues that divide them got me to wondering: What if they switched sides? You know, like in Debate Club.

What if Google hired Samuelson and Berkeley hired Clancy.

Give them a year to get used to their new digs (and perks) and then have them meet again.

To tell you the truth, as I see it, neither of these two would change much. And, to be fair, their skill sets (she is an expert in law and copyright; he is an engineer) could not simply be swapped, so my fantasy could never, in fact, come true.

But the point is, from my experience, you argue from the interest that you represent. If your boss is a search engine, you are representing a search engine. A university is a slightly different kind of boss, but from my years inside Berkeley and Stanford, I can tell you there are certain pressures that come down from above there, as well.

Anyway, it was a nice event at the Commonwealth Club, which has been presenting lectures and panels for over a century now, here by the Bay.

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Bill Ayres and Bernardine Dohrn, Good Americans

Listening to Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn speak yesterday at the Green Festival here in San Francisco, I couldn't help but think back to last year's absurd attempt by the Republican Party to link then-candidate Barack Obama with terrorism, via a bridge with this couple's past.

The layers of irony here are that these are two extremely privileged people from rich families who are highly educated and have devoted their entire adult lives to helping other people.

For a relatively brief period of their youth, perhaps because they came from such sheltered backgrounds, they flirted with what they thought was "revolution," and participated in a bunch of activities anyone from a lower class background, such as mine, could have told them would turn out to be unsuccessful and counter-productive.

Though a fellow son of the Midwest, and a University of Michigan student like Ayres, our paths never really crossed until yesterday, though of course I was aware of him, and attended some meetings as he and others were forming a precursor group of the ill-fated Weather Underground fantasy.

But, after their speeches yesterday, I briefly encountered him outside the hall, touched his arm and said, "Nice job, Bill."

That's it, I'm sure, the only contact I will ever have with Bill Ayres, but had we had a bit longer together, I would have also said these things:

"Thank you for being funny and self-deprecating. If anyone on the purported 'right' in this country had even a fraction of your sense of humor, many other Americans might become conservatives, because all our collective instincts hew in that direction. But, no, the only laughter at self we ever encounter comes from the outsiders on the left. (Mike Huckabee is probably the lone exception on the right, which is why I liked him, as well.)"

"That said, thank you for reminding us that we, those of us who share progressive ideals, are actually the majority in this country, even though for some reason we act, most of the time, as if we were outside of the mainstream.You and Bernardine reminded me today that we actually are the mainstream. It is the right-wing that is living on the margins of the new America."

"Thank you, most of all, for the obvious love you and your wife have for each other. She, too, is a gifted speaker and activist. You both are, clearly, loving parents and grandparents."

For my part, I feel lucky, as an American, that we have people like Bill Ayres and Bernardine Dohrn, among us, still working hard and speaking out about what truly matters if we are to become a truly great nation, not just one that throws its military and financial weight around like a bully on the world's playground.

I'll repeat something I wrote a year ago. I'd love to have dinner with Bill and Bernardine. They have much to say about our society, where it has been and where it is headed.

Plus, I'm quite sure that if it was safe for him to say so, President Obama would agree with me, but he can't and he won't, not until he leaves office and rejoins the rest of us still trying to organize our communities to transform this nation into a true Democracy...which, due to class, it is not tonight, as I write these words.

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You Win Some, You Lose Some

Whether you are a parent or not, or your kid competes or not, there are lessons to be learned from kid sports.



Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose.

Every now and again, your team reaches the championship game of whatever division or level to which you have been assigned. That is what happened to my youngest child yesterday. They played well. They lost. This photo is from late in the game, and you can see she was still competing.


As I've written here before, the best thing about competitive sports for kids is learning about how to lose.

Can you guess how these girls reacted yesterday as their season ended? They cheered. They jumped and yelled and shouted their team chant as if they had won the game. The other team watched them with open mouths, not believing.

If there is a lesson, it is this: Being truly part of a team is so special, that it has a value that none of us could ever calculate.

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San Francisco: A Love Story

Over the course of an adult lifetime spent mostly based here in San Francisco, I've witnessed the transformation of its population by continuous waves of new arrivals, mainly immigrants from Asia and Central America, and by young, artistic or entrepreneurial migrants.

I came here as one of the second type, at age 24, never having lived in a big city before. So San Francisco is, for me, the prototype for a city, even though I realize, through the massive number of trips I've made to other cities on this continent and around the world, that this place is typical of nowhere!

No, San Francisco in unique, but you can find other somewhat similar venues if you consider only a few of its strengths -- climate, physical beauty, architectural heritage, racial and ethnic diversity, collective intelligence, radical culture, nightlife, cuisine, liberal politics, wealth, entrepreneurial spirit, historical significance -- and I could go on and on, but not all of them.

Nobody except us have it all.

I do love this place. But the main source of my love is a belief in the ability of people to find renewal here, by the Bay, next to the mighty Pacific, buffeted by the whitest fog and bluest sky imaginable, not to mention the purest air.

A week ago tonight, I stopped by a local club, in the Mission, where a singer friend of mine was performing, an author was reading, and a photographer was signing copies of his photos. All of this was going on inside one small club just off Mission Street, with a cover price of $12.

If you've never tasted San Francisco's brand of culture, but want to, contact me and I'll be happy to give you a top ten list of "do not miss" ways to begin to understand how we live here -- not how the national media says we live, not how the talk-show maniacs who demonize us say we live, not the comedians -- but us, the residents of the best city in America, bar none.

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Working Holiday: How It All Fits Together

It's a national holiday today, so I can take it off from work. Funny thing about freedom, though, it doesn't always work out the way you'd hoped. Freed from my dreary routine, I decided to take a walk.

Taking my camera, I figured this was a chance to enrich the "pending SI" file I maintain on my laptop. That is where upcoming photos of the streets around me are stored for my photo blog, Sidewalk Images.

Today, however, we came up empty, my camera and me. We saw all the assorted stuff -- plants, trash, cars, people, pets, fixtures, buildings with their slants and angles -- but we couldn't take any photos.

So, I did what I had to do. I published no image, just my admission of the failure of obtaining any image.

Turns out photographers can lose their voice also.

Since I haven't been eating much lately, and in celebration of the holiday, I had steak and eggs for breakfast. On my recent walk with friends in Mill Valley, I'd secured a handful of Laurel Bay leaves, which I grilled the sirloin in.

Steak?

I got it cheap. Safeway has these periodic sales, where you can get them for a buck each. The nice thing about bay leaves is they not only infuse the meat with taste, they aromatize your entire house.

A natural air freshener.

So now I sit here, back from my empty walk, with an empty day and an empty agenda. The silence again closes in around me, and the writing voices erupt. "Do this!"

"No, do that!"

It's Veteran's Day, a time to honor all of those who have served our nation, even when the cause wasn't a just one. They never got to choose; they followed orders. They were brave even when they didn't know whether it mattered.

Maybe it always matters to be brave. Courage comes in many forms, large and small. It's hard to be brave enough to put yourself out there, to do what you can, even to be free.

My camera is held together by duct tape, anyway. It's really hard to take photos anymore. The duct tape stretches, and the photo-taking fails. If only I could use duct tape to fix all the other parts of my life that are broken, solving this mess would be easy.

But something tells me it's not going to be easy, not this time.