Rosemary, Mint & Year's End

As we prepare for a likely fall over the fiscal cliff, the doomsday warnings remind me of December 31, 1999 and the y2k theory. I remember filling our car up with gas in Maryland, where we lived at the time, before traveling around the Beltway to my sister's house in Virginia that New Year's Eve.

Predicted disaster did not ensue that time around.

This time it is not a technology issue but a political one. Competing theories of government's role in a capitalist economy have come forehead to forehead, with neither side inclined to blink. Watching CNN tonight, I can see that the rhetoric chosen by Democrats and Republicans is still aimed at nothing more than public relations, as whatever backroom deal they may be negotiating succeeds or fails to pass the House, in the only vote that matters.

The Senate has had the votes to pass a reasonable compromise all along. Inside the Beltway, it is known as the house of Congress where the "adults" work, as opposed to the other chamber.

Be that as it may, the House is theoretically more representative of the nation, since every state, large or small, has two Senators, regardless of population. The House, by contrast, has 435 members allocated by the population distribution -- thus California has the largest delegation in that chamber, followed by other populous states.

From my time in Washington, covering the political system up close, what I remember most vividly is how image-oriented all the politicians I met were. There was the occasional policy wonk, who cared more about what would actually change things for the better, but most seemed far more concerned about looking good, raising money for their next election cycle, and cutting down their opposition.

During the brief time my roommate was a U.S. Senator, I learned just how much of his time had to be devoted to raising money and/or talking to donors. Basically, it was every available hour outside of actually meeting with his caucus or with the Senate as a whole.

Nothing I saw in D.C. increased my confidence in our federal government. Don't even get me started about our state government in Sacramento, which I've also witnessed up close.

I actually have more faith in local government, which despite many problems, remains most closely in touch with citizens and their concerns.

Not that it necessarily does a good job of addressing those concerns much of the time. But we have a fairly responsive government here in the city of San Francisco. Come to think of it, I must find someone at City Hall to discuss the mess DPT has made along my route from here to Bernal.

They've messed up the intersection of Bryant and 24th. I know this is TMI for most of you but as I drive this route a thousand times every year, it really matters to me. More than the fiscal cliff, if you want to know.

I don't earn enough money to pay taxes and I don't rely on any publicly funded services, other than Medicare, so if they go over the cliff, I doubt it will matter much to me personally. On the other hand, like most Americans, I'm thinking of my country as a whole, and wondering whether it really cam be a world leader much longer with such a dysfunctional political standoff, led not by leaders but elected officials reluctant to lead.

Happy New Year?

Merry Christmas

Magical Thinking

I think that those of us raised by European Christians often have a tendency to hope for some magic to happen in our lives. I'm not sure whether it is embedded in the religion, because I have not participated in any religion fully at any point in my life. It probably has more to do with the myth of Santa Claus, which in our childhoods, exceeded all other forms of magical thinking.

In truth, I liked Santa a hell of a lot more than my notion of God, so as soon as I was old enough, I stopped going to church altogether, although I've never felt any hostility toward those who attend services of any kind in churches, mosques, or synagogues.

I do, however, suspect they do so not so much out of faith but out of the need to be part of a community plus out of respect for family traditions. And those are both good things.

This time of year, with Hanukkah & Christmas, people deeply or even loosely still involved with their faiths are attending services, while people like me cast around for alternative experiences.

Last night, as my daughter sang seasonal songs in her school choir, I felt a warmth remembering the past with my family in Michigan, gathering around the piano and singing Christmas carols.

Those old songs evoke memories and feelings that often feel remote in my present life, living here alone in a flat in the Mission with a cat that wouldn't know the difference between a Christmas carol and a rap song.

A few hours after she performed in the last such holiday concert at her school (she graduates next summer), I dropped my youngest and her brothers with their Mom at the airport, where they caught planes way across this land, ultimately arriving at a lovely tropical island off the coast of southwest Florida -- the place that probably is my favorite spot in the entire world.

I have a long history on that island, starting some 44 years ago, but also one that ended, for all intents and purposes, over a decade ago.

The only part of me that remains is a legacy -- some books and other items inside an ancient cottage called Morning Glories in the historical village on the island. The rich people who bought it and replaced it with a mansion agreed to pay to move it there as a condition of the sale, when my first wife and I sold it to them in the late 1990s.

***

Today, I checked the mail but there is no word yet whether my daughter has been invited to audiition at School of the Arts. She texted me from Florida whether there was news; I answered there is none yet.

An ex-cousin-in-law called from Florida about a new recording he has created with multiple types of music. He is going to mail that to me.

It's been raining all day here. Near the end of the daylight, a strange light appeared, just a ray or two of sun, so I went outside hoping to glimpse a rainbow.

If there was one to be seen, it culd not be glimpsed from down here, between buildings and trees, this time around.

So, as the day closes, I'm not sure any magic happened. As a skeptic, professionally, I'm not sure magic ever actually happens.

As I told my ex-cousin-in-law, I'm more persuaded we become good at tings not through genius but through hard work. I'm an advocate of Macolm Gladwell's thesis in Outliers.

That said, I do wish for some magic sometimes. Especially around this time of year.

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The Silence That Looms

It sounds as if Obama is going to step up in the wake of last Friday's slaughter and use his position as leader of the nation to promote new preventative measures, though I admit to skepticism about what he, or anyone, can do about reducing gun violence here in America.

If there were one group with the power to effect positive change it would be the NRA, the powerful pro-gun lobby.

As I've noted in the past, I'm pro-gun myself, in the sense I hunted as a boy and still own an ancient 16-gauge shotgun, though I don't possess any shells for it.

My three sons have always loved guns, especially BB guns.

I get it.

But weapons that are meant for no other purpose than mass killings of other human beings are beyond my comprehension. I do not understand why anyone, except a delusional paranoid preparing for the apocalypse, could possibly wish to own those types of guns.

That said, I agree with the pro-gun people who say more government regulation of guns isn't going to prevent tragedies like what happened in Connecticut, sadly.

At least it would be a start, however.

Beyond that we have the paucity of resources available for mental health diagnosis and treatment, a critical failure in this society.

Do you know that in order for someone to remain the care of a professional for mental health problems, and for that professional to get reimbursed by most insurance companies, that person has to be declared to be in a critical state?

Anyone who has ever dealt first hand with mental health recovery knows it is a gradual process, that when the patient proceeds from critical to relatively stable, he remains at risk of relapse if not properly attended.

Yet our private insurance companies force providers to jump through so many hoops at this stage of recovery that many are lost from the system, revert to their former ways, and once again are on the streets posing potential risks to themselves and the rest of us.

We do not have a civilized mental health system in this country.

Perhaps the most challenging aspect of this problem overall is the great social disease of dislocation, alienation, and loneliness. Although no one much wants to admit it, we live in world where many of us are speeding away from each other like stars in the universe, ever more distant, silent, and disconnected.

This is our greatest problem of all.

And unless we can find a solution to that, not only will the slaughter of innocents continue, the tragic alienation of many of the rest of us will be an inevitability as well.

Searching for Leadership

What happened today in Connecticut is unspeakably horrible and tragic. Inevitably, it also will become a political question, a matter that demands public debate and new policy initiatives.

These kinds of preventable slaughters have become too frequent -- even one of them would have been too many, and the U.S. is a country now desperately waiting for some leader to emerge with the courage and will to take this problem on.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg was a lone voice on the issue of gun control recently; where is another person of courage?

When a sports commentator added his voice to the conversation, he was widely ridiculed, which says more about the state of denial many sports fans live in than it does about him.

If you are a parent or grandparent or aunt or uncle or even a friend of children, or even if you are none of the above but have a heart, you know how horrifying today was for all of us, and you felt the horror yourself.

I'm not sure that gun control is the entire answer here, but I do know that restricting access to weapons that have no other purpose but to slaughter other humans is the right thing to do.

We also need much better mental health intervention services. We need better community awareness of the signals that someone is in trouble in the types of ways that could lead them to do what was so tragically done today.

Rarely is an individual so isolated that literally no one is aware of his struggles, emotionally and mentally.

Remember that even the Unibomber was eventually identified by his brother, thanks to media circulation of his mad writings.

As I said, gun control is only one piece of what needs to be done, but for that we need a political leader willing to take on the NRA.

For that, it is time to look to our President. I'm sure his emotion today was sincere, that he was acting more as father than as Commander in Chief, as he wiped away tears.

But as President at this moment he is also Father in Chief. Step up, Mr. President, and take on the gun lobby. Now is the right moment. We need you.

p.s. If you agree with these sentiments, please forward them or your own to the White House.

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The Last Time Like This For a Century

Today, as we rounded the hill atop Bernal Heights at 8 a.m., the kids in the carpool and I noticed it had started raining, even though we were bathed in sunlight. "There must be a rainbow," I said out loud, though the kids were, as usual, plugged into their headsets, listening to music, even as I listened to NPR on the car radio, so nobody heard me.

"Wow!" was the collective response, theirs and mine, and we cleared the ridge and a gorgeous full rainbow framed our entire view westward.

It turns out they were paying attention, if not to me, to the environment around us.

Later, I mumbled something about today being 12/12/12. Once again, I doubt anyone was listening, but the point I tried to make was that this is the last time such a numerical date will occur in this century, since there is no 13th month, at least on the Western calendar.

In 89 years, we will again start a twelve year period when we experience another 1/1/1 to 12/12/12 sequence, but that's a long time away.

Alas, nobody was listening.

=30-

Our Immigrant Stories

My 16-year-old has to make a movie consisting of individual photos on the theme of immigration. I couldn't resist relocating some old photos posted to this blog a long time ago and forwarding them to him.

This is the ship my Scottish grandfather, Alexander Anderson, traveled to America on back in 1923.

Here is the manifest from that ship, with his name on it.

It a terrific class assignment for a high school student to research and express himself on the immigration issue. Dylan has plenty of perspective -- he knows about the Irish, the Chinese, the Jewish and the Latino immigrations.

He'll create a soundtrack for his movie. I suggested this song, which he didn't know:


Arlo, the son of the songwriter Woodie Guthrie sings it with Emmy Lou Harris.

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