Ticket to Ride

This is the airline ticket that brought my friend Raul to America, and freedom, 51 years ago.

This is evidence of how saving things can help your survivors better understand your life after you are gone. So it is my way to encourage the pack rats among us.

To Raul's husband, Tony, and others, this was a precious find. To his future biographer, it is priceless.

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p.s. Save important documents.

Tributes

Our Newsroom is starting to take on the feeling of a memorial to Raul, and that is only fitting. He built this place. I love how staffers are finding their ways to assert their connection with Raul. KQED is the house that Raul built.

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God's Final Tears

It rained last night and it rained today. Maybe because both days for me were devoted in so many ways to my dear lost friend, Raul, it felt like God might be crying. I certainly have no relationship with God myself. I tried some years back, but that brief episode utterly failed. Everything about it backfired, and has left me more determined than ever to live out whatever time I may have left Godless.

Excuse my French, but Fuck God.

I no longer can pray. But I can and do chant fake prayers, most days, based on my fears. Every day I ask "God" to protect my children and my loved ones. That is actually a long list of people, most of whom probably do not know they are on my list. Anyone reading these pathetic words is on it. But I will never abandon anyone I have loved. I remember you all. My fake prayer includes you. But not me. I do not want God's protection.

Does that scare me? Of course. What is a mere human being on his own? I still purchase a yearly amulet from Japan that supposedly protects me in some way I do not understand, but that, for me, is superstition, not religion, and is nothing more than some strange last connection to my last girlfriend, who left me utterly without warning. In other words, Godless.

But I buy that amulet to stay within the orbit of her religion. Maybe some errant truck will not gun me down as a result. Because I have aged a lot since she last saw me. I move along the street slowly now, and I am scared to be alone after dark. I never know what to do as I try to cross a street. I am an old man, with terrible back pain, and poor balance.

You see, when those close to you fail you when you need them most, your connection to whatever God is rides sweetly away like a ghost on the wind.

Just like Raul is now gone. He is gone with the wind.

Weekend in the City

A quiet, busy weekend of all our normal activities. Today was the last game of the soccer season; pizza party afterward in the Mission.

Family breakfast yesterday morning. The teens all hugged me and said they were so sorry about losing Raul.

They watched the tributes and talked to me about my friend and his life.

Then we went on with ours.

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Goodbye Sweet Friend, Raul

We do not always get the privilege of honoring those we love, in person, in a speech, or in writing, before they die. Lots of times we just have to let each other go in silence. I hate silence when emotions are deep and strong. Frankly, I hate silence, period. If you care about another person, however awkward it may seem, you should say so when they are still here to hear you.

I got the privilege of telling my dear friend Raul Ramirez how much I loved him numerous times this past month. He died today at 11:45 a.m.

The article I'd prepared beforehand for KQED just needed the date of his death to be publishable. That date turned out to be today. I was at lunch when the news came to me, and I didn't hear my cellphone ring at the time.

Ironically, or perhaps not so, I was using that lunch to try and inspire a young journalist to pursue her dreams, and offering to help her do so. Raul and I are very much alike in this way -- we both have always tried to help the young people who want to try to do this very difficult work to keep going.

Doing that brings on mixed feelings. There is nothing easy about being a journalist. Why should he or I ever push a younger person to enter this business, knowing how hard it will prove to be to prevail?

I don't know the answer to that question, and I suspect Raul did not know, either. Americans basically hate journalists, we all know that.

He's gone now so I can't ask him. But I suspect what I was doing at lunch is what he would have done, also. At least I hope so.

Goodbye my sweet friend.



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Here and there

 My grandson Luca raising his hand after his soccer team's final game of the season this weekend. He scored a goal.

This is a mural on Bryant Street near my house. It reminds me of tourists in the tropics. My thoughts tonight are with the people in the Philippines, after the storm, and that's why I am posting this here.

***

My two youngest sons, Aidan's GF, Zaira, and I went to see the film "Captain Phillips" today.

Wow. I highly recommend it. What is its message? Don't mess with the USA. I don't know how I feel about that message, given that I am also reading "David and Goliath."

But for now, I'd say, this film does an honest job of conveying the situation, circa a few years ago, should those of us who are over-privileged might find ourselves at the mercy of the global under-privileged.

In that event, the message is clear: Don't mess with the Navy Seals.
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Desert Oasis -- A World of Ideas

Back from three days in Phoenix.

I liked it there.

In the end it was a good use of my time -- I connected with some friends, old and new, and heard a lot of good ideas related to the work I do.

On the way there, on my iPad, I read The Circle by Dave Eggers. I highly recommend this book to grasp some of the darker prospects the technology industry may be bringing us.

On the way back, I read David & Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell. I'm not finished yet but I love this book for all sorts of counter-intuitive information about what it is like being the underdog in life.

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