My Cowboy Past

Courtesy of my cousin Dan, here is a photo of him, his brothers and me from the early 50s. I am on the far right, with the cowboy hat and gun. I remember getting that outfit but not when or why.

For me, getting together with my three Anderson cousins was always a highlight -- relatively rare (because they usually lived in other states) but fun. Not having any brothers of my own, they were like brothers to me.

Happy holiday season, everyone!

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Losing an Artist

There was a terrible warehouse fire in Oakland last Friday night, and one of the 36 people killed was a colleague at KQED, Alex Ghassan. One of his closest friends works on my staff and others who report to me knew him as well. I'd met him once or twice but cannot say I knew him well.

The link above describes him and his work and was written by one of my colleagues, David Markus. Soon after he wrote this tribute, David learned that his mother had died.

It's been a very rough week here...

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Julia Meets Bernie

Quite a day. We had a Facebook Live broadcast with Bernie Sanders today on our Forum program. It went an hour.

My youngest came to KQED to watch it with me and she got quite a surprise. I was giving her a tour of the building when we noticed a crowd of maybe 20 employees gathered at the window at the east end of the second floor (where the newsroom is.)

We decided to go down there and just as we arrived, a car pulled up to the building's entrance below as we were watching through a window.

"There he is!" someone shouted. Most everyone pulled out their cellphones and started snapping pictures.

We then gathered near the elevators and stairs, not knowing which way he would come up.

Elevator. He emerged to cheers and cameras snapping. He then walked up to each and every one of us to say hello and shake our hand. After he greeted me he shook Julia's hand and said hello to her. She broke into a broad smile and pretty much kept smiling the rest of her visit.

When he was finished with Forum, he proceeded across the floor to our TV studio, amid dozens more KQED employees, where he appeared on KQED Newsroom, one of the programs I manage. Julia was for a time in the control room with me. it was packed.

Back to the Facebook Live, views and interactions are still coming in, but already the numbers by afternoon were great:  1,529,000 reach and 189,797 views. We expect those numbers to go up a lot over the weekend.

Best of all for me? I got to seem a little bit cool for a change in the eyes of my 18-year-old.

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Happy Thanksgiving!

Moderation? Perhaps.

So Trump gave an interview to The New York Times yesterday, during which he appeared to pull back from some of his most extreme positions. This was something I speculated about back when I first predicted he would win the election, six months or more ago. Compared to many of my friends and colleagues, this is what would be considered a naive or unduly hopeful view.

But I've never been sold on Trump as a right-winger, any more than I ever considered Obama a left-winger. These are rhetorical terms the parties heave at one another, whereas most people who make a serious run for President tend to be centrists. Obama certainly is; we'll see about Trump.

He's starting to pull back from "jailing crooked Hillary," which was always a preposterous notion. He's pulling back from torture after speaking with a general. He's pulling back from threatening the press. He's got an "open mind" about climate change. His "wall" on the border sounds more like a fence.

Next he has to renounce the notions of registering Muslims and deporting millions of immigrants. He's also got to appoint some Democrats and moderates to his cabinet. That will no doubt happen.

Call me an optimist. That's what I've always been. I don't think Trump wants to be a dictator but the center of media attention. What's certain is he has certainly accomplished the latter.

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Difficult Days Ahead

It is a gray, rainy weekend here in San Francisco. I took a short walk this morning and the air felt fresh and clean.

I have been thinking a lot about whether we are entering an era of fascism. Many of my friends think so, but I doubt it.

Nevertheless, the evidence is there to support their view. Trump and his supporters have suggested that all Muslims be "registered," and some have said they should be put into concentration camps.

In case anyone thinks this is a Republican problem I would point out that Japanese-Americans were rounded up and interred under a Democratic president during World War 2.

All it may take would be one more terrorist attack on the homeland by a n Islamic extremist to provoke President Trump to enact such a plan.

The question is what would the rest of us do about that?

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Hopeful Things

Yesterday I met Manu Prakash, who has invented a very cheap paper microscope that allows anyone, particularly children in poor countries, to explore scientific subjects, especially micro-biology. He recently won a MacArthur Genius grant and was a guest on our TV news show, KQED Newsroom.

He's a delightful geek, who grew up in India and is now a bioengineer at Stanford. His microscope is basically built from origami and small lenses and, once assembled, can magnify tiny things by at least 150 x.

The cost of the paper miscroscope is 55 cents. I have been trying to figure out how to order it -- I think that will become possible on Monday via Kickstarter. I'd love to order a bunch of them for my grandchildren.

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