Relaxable Times

We've had enough rains that the backyard is flowering. I don't get out there much these days as most of the time during daylight hours I am at work; or, on weekends, doing things with the kids.

But with the longer hours of light, maybe I'll start to go back there more often.

A quiet domestic Sunday: did a big grocery shopping trip today so I can cook dinners and lunches and breakfasts for the kids starting tonight and tomorrow morning.

It's spring training time for baseball fans, so I am listening to the Giants playing the Dodgers in Arizona.

I gave a big speech downtown last week at a Google Media Summit. Got to give another one at an all-staff at work. The subject is News Fix, our online news channel, which is growing rapidly and is the core of the work I am doing for KQED.

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Special Saturday

The top image is simply a botched scan on a tax document. It seems like every weekend I am either filling out taxes, financial aid forms, or similar documents. And this photo tells it all.

The other photo is from the Verizon store in the Mission where the kids and I always go to upgrade their phones. Verizon has changed its policy and no longer requires people with accounts like ours to sign up for two-year contracts every time we get a new phone.

Julia was thrilled to get a new iPhone 5C (green) for about $50, to be paid over the coming year. Of course the monthly contract -- for calls, texts, data, etc. -- is how Verizon makes its money and I know that. But until recently they also charged a lot when you needed to upgrade to a new phone. Plus there was always that irritating two-year commitment.

Under competition, things change.

Julia was very happy, not only about her new phone, but about a job opportunity she now has -- working in a dog-grooming shop in Noe Valley. When I picked her up after her two-hour trial visit today, she was smiling and talkative.

As we arrived home, a new cat greeted her on the street. Black and white and a bit pudgy, the cat sought her out as animals always do. She sat on the sidewalk and played with the cat and then it followed us inside for a while.

All in all a very nice day, topped off when my college team, Michigan, won its final game of the basketball regular season to finish with a record of 15-3 in the Big Ten and an outright championship.

First in over a quarter century.

Math, Magic and Mysteries of the Universe

As I walked home, commuting from the office tonight, I saw what looked like a dark rain cloud rising in the West. One of the joys of living on the edge of a continent is the kinds of dramatic weather events that sweep in from the mighty Pacific.

It's a reminder of how small and powerless we are, little mammals beholding the much greater power in the sky.

An hour later, that cloud seems to have shrunk back into something that looks more like one of more familiar fog banks. According to my handy iPhone weather app, there is only a 7 percent chance of rain tonight, so I'm going with that.

Seven percent is essentially a one in 14 probability. Those are not very good odds for most bets. However, if you had a one in 14 chance to win a car in a drawing, those would be excellent odds.

I've been reading Nate Silver's The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail — but Some Don't, which I commend to anyone wanting to think more deeply about probabilities, causation and correlation.

As a former math major who could not handle the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus, and therefore switched to story-telling, I have nevertheless always remained in love with math in the abstract.

Maybe it is the kind of unrequited love for something or someone who will never notice you, or value you. I'm kinda in love with math but math is most definitely not in love with me -- nor with my brain.

But when numbers cycle in and out, always, everywhere, all the time, I feel beset by the mathematical beauty of the universe. There are, as Silver eloquently demonstrates, mathematical models that quite accurately predict the path of storms nowadays.

So a 7 percent chance of rain is just that -- something unlikely to happen more than once every fourteen times these particular meteorological conditions develop in this micro-climate.

Then again, maybe this will be that night?

That is something even math does not know. Because there is also always magic afoot.

Oscar Sunday

The kids and I, like most people, always enjoy watching these award ceremonies. Especially when it's a rainy day!

I taught Aidan how to file his own tax return today and completed Dylan's financial aid form. Julia's been busy with homework after her futsol game. We stopped by Whiz Burger near here on the way across town for an Oscar day late lunch.

Aidan's at work and will have to miss the show. When the awards are completed I'll take Julia back to bernal.

All quiet family stuff The way I like Sundays to be.

Listening, a Story of Teenagers

So many things going through my head this Friday night. We have had a nice rainstorm out here in the drought zone, which is a very good thing. The wetness all around us feels like a blessing from the Rain Gods.

But first, my kids. I continue to be concerned about my youngest child, particularly regarding her difficult adjustment to being a freshman in high school. Tonight, as I watched her joke with her brother who is a senior in a different high school, I suddenly realized how helpful the whole Mom's House/Dad's House model of parenting can be for children of divorced parents.

Her mom has never allowed TV. I always have. It's as if we represent the yin and yang of parenting.

As Julia and Dylan watch silly TV shows together tonight, they talk and laugh and share impressions about the powerful cultural influences that dominate the views of their peers. She tends to ask him questions and he tends to provide answers. In the process, they are of course playing out ancient gender roles, but every now and again she seems to have the answer to something that he is wondering about.

This is a subtle interplay, one I notice only because I am always hovering in the kitchen, cooking them dinner.

I think it is in these secondary moments, where she knows what he does not, that the both advance and grow as people. And indeed, if we are ever as a species to become better, women's voices have to matter every much as much as men's.

What we really need to learn to do is to listen to each other.

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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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