Thanksgiving 2015

Chinese Restaurant

Here is Julia with her friend from boarding school Lila tonight at dinner with me at Alice's in Noe Valley. They were noticing that they were both sitting the same way. Lila is from a small town in Vermont and is a vegetarian and a performance artist.

It's a cold night in SF but we had a warm dinner.

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Holiday Time

Julia is home from boarding school for Thanksgiving break and I took her out for lunch today. She chose one of our favorite local haunts -- Whiz Burger -- that's been around since drive-in diners were the scene in the 50s.

She told me her final project at school is making a 4 x 4 quilt out of recycled materials. She showed me a photo of it and it looks absolutely beautiful.

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Grandparents' Day

Yesterday I got up a bit earlier than usual and drove down to San Jose so I could be with my oldest grandson, James, on Grandparents' Day. We worked on a paper turkey together, told some stories, and then I watched him play a kicking game at recess.

It was short, simple visit, but he kept smiling the whole time. So did I.

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Paris

Awards

Last night, I rode with colleagues to the SPJ awards dinner at a fancy place downtown. With the time change, it gets dark around here by 5 p.m. and we left the office more like 5:45 p.m. Our driver used the Ways app, a crowd-sourced guide to how to avoid the worst traffic, which in modern San Francisco, is like choosing a slightly less toxic poison over another.

As a result, we wove through the streets like a snake, slivering this way and that. It took a very long time to get to the venue.

Once there, I thought about how it used to be, a quarter century ago, when I knew virtually everyone in the room. Nowadays, I recognize almost no one. In my pre-day fantasy, I had expected many people to come up and greet me, since I rarely venture out to these events, and am, after all, someone who has been acive in the local journalism community for 44 years now.

Exactly one person came up to speak to me. Few others knew who I am.

On the other hand, I did not work the room. I felt tired after the day at work, and just sat at our table (Table #1). Journalists love to network at these events, so there was a lot of partying before the main event got under way.

Once it did, our team won an abundance of awards. Almost everyone on my team went up to the podium to accept an award. We took home a ton of hardware.

As the ceremony came to an end, I caught a cab home -- the first time I have taken a taxi in years.

Back home, I thought about all of the awards I won as a journalist, a couple dozen. And I thought about why those of us who endure this work do it, what we are looking to accomplish. And I thought a lot about injustice, unfairness, and empathy.

As I watched my staffers collect their awards, I realized what I love about all of them the most. They are a stubborn, hard-working, egoistic group, trust me. But they all share one characteristic -- empathy.

As they tell their stories, they never portray the people in them as "other" -- they always try to find a way to make them seem like you and me. Which is one form of truth.

If journalism matters, and I hope it does, it is to do work like this. To help us all find our common humanity with each other.

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Clouds to the West and South

More rain overnight plus thunderstorms. Came home at lunch to get Dylan (on his day off this week) his burrito at El Metate. Watching Monday Night Football and hoping my fantasy team will finish the night in sole possession of second place, with a 6-3 record. Tomorrow night, going to the SPJ awards dinner with my team to clap for them as they collect the hardware.