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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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.

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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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