Over Coffee

Today, the morning after another of their late Sunday nights watching their favorite shows on TV and on Netflix, I gently started cooking bacon for my two youngest sons at the hour they really needed to be waking up. I've learned over the years that there is nothing like the smell and sound of cooking bacon to get a young man's attention.

The youngest and tallest starting stirring soon afterwards, as I gently reminded him that he had promised that he would set his cellphone alarm, which he neglected to do, in order to get him to school on time.

He ate his bacon and waffles, tucked the lunch I'd prepared for him into his backpack and off we headed to his bus stop. "I checked a minute ago and it said the bus would be here in 15 minutes," he told me. "Now it says 6 minutes."

"No problem," I replied. We got there in time.

Back home, his slightly older brother was up and had eaten *his* bacon.

After that, I had a choice to make: Get to work on-time, more or less, or spend some time with my 19-year-old.

As I have done throughout my "career," I chose the latter option.

Some people have labeled me a "legendary" journalist. I kinda doubt that. I know I have been a very good and a very hard-working journalist all of my adult life.

But as important as that work has been to me, it has never, ever even come close to my work (and joy) as a father. You could give me all the awards in the world, and I've won a few of them, but none of that acclaim would come close to the joy I feel for what I've tried to do, with mixed results, as a dad.

So, no surprise here, but I turned up at work an hour and a half late, after coffee with Aidan. We had a wonderful and revealing conversation. He is dealing with a lot of tough choices. Far tougher than any of us in public broadcasting face. I'll try to post about that later this week.

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The Homeless and Us

One of my favorite posts to edit since arriving at KQED was yesterday's by one of our interns. The article is about an Oakland artist who uses found materials on the street to construct small, free homes for homeless people. Read it. If only we all could have such impacts in our lives?

Today my youngest (#12 above) soldiered on in a losing cause, 2-13. In the photo above, she got to the ball first. I told her afterwards how proud of her I am as she continues competing in sports at a time when not much else seems to be giving her pleasure about life.

It is so hard to see such a wonderful young woman struggling with the complexities and disappointments of being a teenager.

Earlier today, I picked her up at a BART station after she made her way there from the East Bay. Only the second time she's done that. She had a distant look on her face and said nothing.

While waiting for her, I watched so many old, broken, sad people, some of whom are no doubt homeless. Across the Bay, one artists is doing something for them.

Maybe we all could do better?

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The Fish, the Trees, and Us

Well, the end of another work week. I've been working full-time for six and a half months now at KQED and my life has settled into a new routine. I walk to and from work, sit through a lot of meetings, edit some material, occasionally write something myself, and work with young journalists helping them shape some of the first stories of their nascent careers.

A few of of my colleagues are older, people I've known for decades. One of these is Dan Brekke, a fine writer who today posted one of the most beautiful essays on the interconnectedness of all life that I've read in a while.

Ostensibly an article about the Coho salmon that are fighting against extinction here in Northern California, Dan's piece goes way beyond that issue to raise questions that should haunt us all.

The physical site of his piece, which includes video and audio materials, is Lagunitas Creek. I didn't even know it by that name since my niece Elizabeth always called it "Pt. Reyes' Brother" when she was little and my wife and I used to stop there with her on the way home from the beaches of Pt. Reyes.

While the ocean was not necessarily the best place for a little girl to swim, Point Reyes' Brother was just fine. A shallow, slow-moving stream set amidst the few remaining redwoods in an area where most of a magnificent forest had been clear-cut.

The Coho have been spawning here for far longer than we humans have been around. When they swim up the creek to lay their eggs and then die, they have been part of a magnificent ecological balance. Their bodies have long been the fertilizer that vultures spread along the banks and inland from the river.

Some of the mightiest trees on earth rose from that fertilizer.

Meanwhile, year after year, the young Coho splash around in the creek until they are big enough to swim out to sea. On their way they enter the mighty Tomales Bay.

Then the roaring Pacific beyond.

Eventually they return to spawn and die.

Dan's piece describes how fragile their numbers have become and how this year's drought, a dry period of Biblical proportions, almost spelled their doom, until a recent rainstorm allowed a few hundred of them to finally do what they have been doing for millenia.

They are in Point Reyes' Brother now, trying to reproduce, trying to survive.

Their fate hangs in the balance, but so does ours. Because we are inextricably bound up with the Coho and the redwoods and every other living creature on earth, for better or for worse. With our monstrously hiuge brains and appetites, we have been destroying our home for far too long now.

It is time for all of God's children to become environmentalists. Because whatever heaven may exist in your imagination is endangered right before your eyes. Go to Lagunitas Creek, or another site nearer to your home, and consider what I have written here.

Climate change doesn't matter? Only a fool, a fool of the worst kind, would hold to such an opinion. Also a selfish fool, the kind of person who cares only for himself and not for fellow humans, especially our young, who may not even have a fighting chance unless we rapidly change our ways and return as much of our natural environment to its essential form before we, and most other creatures, go extinct.

President's Day Brunch

That's what the kids and I had on this day off of school and work. I like these mid-day gatherings because they tend to unplug from their devices for a while, and laugh and joke.

It's nice that they like each others company so much; that is not always the case with siblings. One thing that helps is they are really not all that similar as people -- they have three completely different approaches to most things.

For instance they almost never order the same meal when we eat out.

Yet they share a value system and they all seem to respect one another. I give them the credit; the parents can't really affect this outcome, it has to come from within them as people.

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Sunday's Sunday

My son Peter and his girlfriend, Claire, on their way to Thailand.

***

It's a three-day weekend, as Monday is President's Day. It's sunny and clear as the worst drought in half a millennium continues here on the coast.

I'm spending the day watching Big Ten basketball, back where it's snowy and cold. Growing up in the Midwest, I used to love these games, no matter who was playing. Just before I got to Michigan, a great basketball player from Chicago showed up. A guy named Cazzie Russell.

He was the best shooter I had ever seen, and off the court, a humble man.

I interviewed him as a young sportswriter, he was invariably polite and soft-spoken.

Ever since then, I have appreciated how sports helps kids not from the elite succeed. I have my own three stellar athletes -- Peter, Aidan, and Julia.

Julia is the only one still competing. More on her after her next game...

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Shredding Random Bits of My History

I have reached the point in my life's journey that I realize that some of what I have experienced should not be preserved. Accordingly, tonight, I shredded much of the evidence of my relationships since my second marriage ended over a decade ago.

The photo above captures what a shredded photograph can turn out like -- a cityscape if you will, something a bit lovely like San Francisco or maybe the fleeting memory of an ex-girlfriend.

Unlike those marginal records, my published writings, my personal journals, my family photos, and so forth, have been preserved, for now.

But the purges will continue. This flat is far too messy and crowded and I want to transform it into a clean, livable space.


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Out in the Rain

Julia's futsol team won their first game, 3-2 today. She said the other team started playing rough near the end when they realized they were in danger of losing. One girl, for example, reached over and pushed Julia, trying to get her off the ball.

"You should have pushed back," I said.

"I did," she answered.

On the way home, she asked that we stop at Starbuck's, which we did, in the continuing rain. She ordered a coffee and a fruit cup.

This is a determined girl, my daughter. She may not like the taste of coffee, but by god, she's going to learn to. She mixed in some sugar and some milk, then drank the cup empty.

I've always realized that she is the type of person who will not be held back, once she puts her mind to something. She's also a perfectionist.

Lately, she has been very quiet, not happy, non-communicative, and clearly bothered by certain things. She seems to think she needs to diet. She's clearly having trouble making friends at school. Others say she may be not responding to kids who try to be her friend.

That doesn't sound like the girl I know. She is very self-contained but always has also been friendly. I know she is shy but not abnormally so. I think she has a reasonable amount of self-confidence, but I also know it must be hell to be a 15-year-old girl.

She said something today that revealed a bit of how she experiences the world right now:

"Teenage girls are horrible people. Awful." This was in response to her mother's question of whether she might like to transfer into an all-girls school.

"That's the last thing I would want to do," she said with an emphasis that precluded any further conversation.

How to be a good parent for a child like this at this stage?

Although I've raised five other teens, I feel clueless. I don't think I should just wait it out. Julia is clearly in a certain amount of pain and she probably needs me more now than ever.

Shopping used to help but lately, when we go into a store, she looks at the clothes, runs her hands over the fabric, then turns and walks out, without a word.

If I ask what is wrong she says nothing.

The most recent thing she allowed me to buy her was a winter coat. She wore it today, in that rain. As we were walking into Starbuck's, she actually said something to me, without any prompt!

"You know the only thing I don't like about this coat? It doesn't have a hood."

"Yes," I fumbled in response, not used to being spoken to. "That would be helpful in the rain."

Afterwards I kicked myself for not offering her my baseball cap. After all, my jacket does have a hood.

I did tell her I have a plan, and here it is. We are going to transform her bedroom, which until now has been a kind of messy, catch-all room with an uncomfortable bed, poor lighting and some boxes of files.

I told her we will remake the room into a nicer place, something based on her tastes. We'll get a new bed, lamps, and put whatever in there she wants to be in there.

She seemed to like that idea, but I'm not sure. It's so hard to tell.

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