Vacation Reunion

The six of us came together from far flung places for an exquisite vacation on Cape Cod. For three of us it was as if we were weaving additional design onto a warp of yarn that was strung before we were born. Our mothers were best friends and we grew up in each other's houses where the Moms' incessant chatter and laughter nurtured our own sense of well being. On one kitchen table or another, coffee cups were imprinted with lipstick that read like ancient hieroglyphics - declaring boldly that friendship trumps personal struggle; comaraderie stitches ragged fabric pieces into a magnificent, warm, patchwork quilt. Two of our mothers died years ago - a car crash; cancer - and the third lives in a memory free world upstairs from her looms and yarns where she used to weave art pieces that hung in museums. We honored each of the moms with a purposeful visit each night to the local ice cream parlor. We followed the yarns back to their original crossings and savored the design in which we recognize our own inextricable shapes and colors.

Carmi's grandfather and his three brothers came to Southern Illinois from a Polish village, Torchin, that we could no longer find on a map or on Google. They started a family furniture and bedding business over which Carmi presides, eighty years later, holding together a colorful cast of cousins and uncles and trying to stay competitive in a business world where big chains operated by MBA's eat smaller companies for lunch. He's got an octogenarian uncle on the payroll who once ran a factory but currently just walks among the machines reading psalms to keep them running well.

Sari's grandfather came from the same village and settled in New York City. Sari and I remember our summer vacation in '62 at her grandparents' Far Rockaway bungalow, drinking in the magic of the boardwalk at a time when kids were free to roam during the day. We were flush with enough money in our pockets for a delicious slice of pizza and a couple of games of Keno. When Sari's mother and father were first married, they used their Torchin connections to get Shooky (Sari's Dad) work in Illinois at one of the furniture stores.

My parents met Carmi's parents as teen-agers, before either couple was married. In 1946, they were at a New Jersey training camp for people who wanted to live on kibbutzim and build what would become the State of Israel.

By 1950 or '51, all three couples were married and living in Peoria, Illinois. In 1953, Sari, Carmi, and myself were born.

Somebody left their finger on the "fast forward" button and we are suddenly 54 years old with nine, 20-something kids between us (counting my partner, Sally's two daughters). In between is a blur of images reflecting intermingled childhoods and family vacations. There are the casualties, including Carmi's brother who lost his life to drugs and then cancer, and Carmi's first wife and my mother who died in the same car crash, hit by a drunk driver. There are the sketchy stories like the barely-spoken-about car trip to Oaxaca, Mexico that my mother and Carmi's mother took in 1961, that included a heavy peyote trip.

On Cape Cod with our wonderful partners our biggest decision was whether to swim in the ocean or the pond and what to cook for our nightly feasts. But whether at the pond, the ocean beach, or the dinner table, the six of us sat in a circle of highly charged conversation, with a million questions for each other. We dissected ourselves psychologically, reviewed our respective family systems, and the events that led us into six very different trajectories.

For many around the world, it sounds pretty pedestrian for three friends to share three or four generations of interconnection. I suspect it is a rarity for many urban Americans. In any case, for the six of us, those circles had a sacred quality - woven with history and ghosts, dreams realized and dreams deferred,loyalty and love, wrinkles and spider veins, and the delicious substance that radiates from enduring friendship.

George Stoney "Delivers" Miss Mary Coley

I get tongue-tied whenever I'm around somebody famous, and my lips lock into a frozen smile. One time I sat on a bench next to Jerry Garcia for five minutes without coaxing any words into the light of day.

Filmmaker, George Stoney, is considered to be the "father" of community access TV in the States, the field in which I've worked most of my adult life. After working on a civic-film project in Canada, he procured a grant to incubate public access media centers here in the states. I'd see him at the annual community media conferences but could never think of an intelligent conversation-starter. In 1992, he made some opening remarks at the conference and told attendees to read an article I'd written. I was shocked when he referred to my last name and my inner voice burst into the Hallelujah chorus. A couple of times in subsequent years we spoke on panels together.

Then in early 2003 he called me from his office at New York University in lower Manhattan and asked if I knew a man by the name of Coley in Palo Alto. It so happened that I did and that we had crossed paths in a couple of civic organizations. Bernard Coley had been leaving some messages for George and George had not yet replied. I called Bernard and found out that he had been surfing the internet for information on his grandmother and had come across a listing of a movie George had made about her back in 1952. Nobody in his extended family had seen it.

George had been commissioned by the State of Georgia Health Department to make a training film for rural midwives. They were poor Black women who got their training in the apprentice-tradition of folk medicine. The Health Department expected the kind of educational health film we used to sit through in school, where the clicking sound of the projector was more interesting than the monotonous narration and sterile diagrams.

George started his media career doing radio interviews with farmworkers in the field and instinctually knew that the best information resides in the experiences of people. George had found out that Miss Mary Coley was the most accomplished midwife in Dougherty County and he gained her permission to shadow her for four months. After that he filmed some re-enactments of what he'd witnessed, creating a cross between an educational program and a docudrama. In 2002, it was one of twenty-five films chosen for preservation in the Library of Congress. In its 55 year lifetime it has been used as a tool for training midwives in numerous other states and in many countries. It has also been shown in many college classrooms as an example of early documentary style. (The former head of Stanford's School of Communications told me that he showed it regularly to his classes.)

Last week, "All My Babies" came out on DVD (and is available on Netflicks). It includes a wonderful commentary by George who - at 91 years old - has a razor sharp memory when he recalls his personal history. It also includes a short interview I did with Bernard Coley that originally aired on the "Community Journal" series I produced for two years. Discovering the film was the beginning of a new phase in Bernard's life. Through the lens of George's camera, Bernard rediscovered his personal history and a new pride for the work of his grandmother and her pivotal role on the American stage.

A year later, Bernard and George had become friends; George and I had become friends; Bernard gave talks about the extraordinary work of his grandmother; George talked about making a sequel film that would trace the legacy of the film and the extended Coley family itself; and a call came from the Smithsonian museum. An exhibit was created about African-American midwives and it featured Miss Mary and two others. Bernard got a VIP pre-viewing at the Anacostia Smithsonian, ironically only blocks away from where he'd grown up.

Miss Mary's offspring had assumed that George had made a bundle from the movie and shared none of it with their family. In fact, George had sold some property to finish the film the way he wanted to make it. It took Bernard nearly four years of heated lot phone calls and family meetings for Bernard to bring George into the Coley fold. Early this year, George accompanied Bernard to Albany, Georgia. It was the first time he'd been back since Miss Mary's funeral in 1966, where, in the tense days of the Civil Rights movement, George was the only white present.

This Spring George returned to Albany as the guest of the Coleys and has become very close with one of her grandsons (who, as a 2 or 3 year old had a cameo in the film). His letters from Albany fairly sing with a youthful enthusiasm. He's had many fortuitous meetings with people who'd been helped by Miss Mary, or want to support his sequel. One day, for example, George was approached by an African American man who saw him viewing a monument. Not only was this man the first African American mayor of Albany, but an obstetrician as well. Albany has seen a lot of change in racial relations since many of Miss Mary's 11 children left town to make a better life for themself in other parts of the country.

George and the Coleys are organizing a tribute to Miss Mary to be held in late October. Some of the 3000 babies she delivered and some of the mothers she coached through those deliveries will converge to swap stories and talk about their own lives. I was invited to be one of the story recorders and know it will be an experience I'll always treasure. It will also be another precious chance to hang out with my good friend George.

SICKO

On opening night, a group of us went to see Michael Moore's movie, "Sicko," about our decaying healthcare system. Moore says this movie is not directed at the nearly 50 million Americans who have no health insurance, but to the 250 million who are entrusting their medical benefits to the insurance and HMO industries. Everyone in our group was 50+ years old and well into the stage of life where every conversation touches on body functions and dysfunctions that didn't use to register a blip on our radar screens. But this movie should also concern my 24 year old with his six concussions and everyone else who has left any kind of trail on their medical record. The insurance industry REWARDS doctors who refuse to recommend medical procedures and they employ people to investigate the insured who may not have volunteered enough information about their medical pasts when they "applied" for healthcare.

Normally a video or article about Health Care is like all the "Privacy Policies" we skip online and just click "OKAY", or Terms of Agreements that we flip right into the garbage when they come in the mail. The good news for my son and the rest of us is that Michael Moore knows how to make political awareness and multilayered issues wildly entertaining.

As Moore takes us to countries like Britain and France, we find out that healthcare can actually be determined by doctors who take an oath to fix us, rather than by bureaucrats who get fired when they give back too many of our dollars. We discover that our system is as absurd as it is uncaring. We discover that doctors still make housecalls in France and it's not something that had to go the way of the Milk Man in the name of progress.

For Californians who see the movie and then realize they are "mad as hell and don't want to take it anymore," there is a bill in the State Senate that would create universal healthcare. SB 840 is strong medicine. It's sitting in some committee, but if a few million of us get vocal about it, we can make it win out over the two other reform plans that would leave the insurance/HMO industry in charge.

See the movie first as it begins to rebut the myths we've grown up on about "socialized medicine." Sure, there is no system that will be perfect for everyone, but right now there are nearly 300 million of us who are standing on shaky ground even as we pay through the nose for the "privilege" of healthcare.

Mercury News Tragedy

The Mercury News reports today on the suspected suicide of a beloved editor, Rich Ramirez who was found dead Wednesday morning. A longtime colleague of his told me that "he was a wonderful human being, endlessly helpful who gave his entire life to journalism." People are devastated at the Merc where grief counselors were on hand and an impromptu memorial took place.

I wouldn't know what drove a great person like him to take his life, but it couldn't have helped that the Merc is in the throes of yet another round of layoffs about to be announced. On Wednesday, there was a full staff meeting in which new management announced that the number of layoffs would be forty. Nobody is to come to work on July 2nd. Those who are to be axed will receive a call at home. The goal is to get down to 200 employees on a staff that numbered 350 a few years ago. Mr. Ramirez had been told privately that his position as assistant to the Executive Editor would be eliminated but that he could transfer back to the newsroom.

For the rest of the news staff, there is some relief that the layoff number is forty, when many had expected sixty, but the layoffs hang over everyone's head like a "game" of Russian Roulette. It's not a good time to be looking for work in the shrinking newspaper industry.

Condolences to the Ramirez family in their time of devastating loss. Best wishes to the entire Mercury News staff with the hope that they are given the encouragement and space to grieve and share the myriad feelings they must be going through - rocked by grief, shock, and personal angst.

Father's Day Love

On Saturday morning I went out onto the deck and a guy (pictured above) was sitting there in disguise. It was an uncomfortable moment as I bent down and looked at him because I knew it must be some friend that I wasn't able to recognize. When he pulled off his Groucho Marx glasses, nose, and mustache a few seconds later, I was simultaneously mortified that I hadn't instantly known him and dizzy with pleasure that it was my son Alex who had come up from San Diego. It was the furthest thing from my mind that I'd see either of the twins this year. I last saw Alex in December when we went in our unusual family constellation to Mexico - a vacation that was also his and Zac's college graduation present.

Alex has been hard to reach in recent years, his time consumed by the pleasures and routines of his extremely social lifestyle - the many friends, the always sweet and pretty girlfriend-of-the-year, the daily weightlifting, the restaurant work, and until last July - his schoolwork. When I call on the phone, he is always enroute to something or other and has to get off quickly. But he also has the knack of immediately charming his mother or me as soon as we're together with his happy, loving attention.

He definitely made this one of my favorite Father's Days ever. We went on two big hikes, ate great, and went to a zydeco concert at a nearby little nightclub.

The surprise visit was arranged by his mother, Deborah. We ended our marriage over twenty years ago, but found our way into a glorious friendship fueled by mutual admiration for the other's co-parenting skills. We always lived within a couple of miles of each other - sometimes closer - and the boys alternated whose house they went to after school/daycare every other day. (This week Deborah and I are going out to celebrate 30 years of friendship.)

The first day's hike included Alex, me, and Deborah at Hidden Villa where Alex and Zac went to a two week day camp numerous summers. Alex talked about his new job for a fast growing company that rents and sets up huge draping for conventions and concerts. He has quickly risen to a manager position that will begin in a month. He joked about his commitment challenges when it comes to girlfriends and wondered if he's ever really fallen in love. The three of us each took a stab at defining love. Alex's definition was about finding someone who does wonderful things for you. Deborah and I both spoke about how it is just as much about what you want to do for and with your partner – the ways you want to discover them on deeper and deeper levels, care for them, and build a history together. We both acknowleged that for every day that you are fully in touch with those vibrant feelings, there are many when you are just going through motions.

What I forgot to acknowlege was what was right in front of my face, perhaps obscured by its very pervasiveness or because it was camouflaged by the equivalent of a Groucho Marx nose and glasses - but there I was spilling over with more love than I could ever contain with every step along the creek and under the sun as we climbed the formidable hill together.

Newspaper Layoffs: The Daily Planet is Melting

Are our Bay Area daily newspapers grinding to a halt the same way that arctic glaciers are melting just out of our sight?

I had breakfast with a friend who reports for the San Jose Mercury News and he said that they are bracing for a 25% reduction in their 250 person news team. Last October they negotiated a temporary reprieve from any layoffs and as of July the pink slips can start tumbling off the printing press. Time flies when you're running around investigating and writing stories to inform the public.

Three weeks ago at the San Francisco Chronicle, they announced a similar 25% reduction that has already begun. Both papers have closed down their Peninsula Bureaus (tho the Chronicle did it a few years ago). John Curley, a Chronicle editor who spent 25 years there and is a sophisticated Web 2.0 guy, was one of the ones who was pushed out. You'd think they'd be promoting the folks who can blaze the path for the paper to prosper with web services.

It's unclear whether any execs at these papers have a plan other than the tried and true corporate cost cutting scenario of recent decades. (I've never understood how mass layoffs actually work in any industry assuming that most employees were working hard at something the company produces to stay competitive.) At a newspaper, will it translate into something like The Weekly Reader, that we got in grade school? Will the Merc and Chron end up merging somewhere down the line into a regional McNewspaper? Who's going to want to major in journalism anymore, let alone practice it? What am I going to put under my cereal bowl that simultaneously keeps me informed, entertained, and out of trouble for making a mess on the table?

John McManus seems to have an inside track on these events in his blog at Grade the News.

photo credit: dickie at flickr.com http://www.flickr.com/photos/simplethingsuask/42917792/

Web 2.0 Social Change has an Essential Active Ingredient

Last week I attended a very cool conference about social change and the social web. It focused on 21 nonprofit organizations who made their case for funding their particular web 2.0 strategies. At the end, we voted for three who received substantial cash grants while the remaining 18 got enough $ to make the conference well worth their time and effort. My job was to walk around and do short interviews (now called videoblogs) with attendees for Netsquared,the sponsoring organization. If one could transform the idealism there into alternative energies, we could have provided all the electricity for San Jose for at least six months.

There are those who talk about the amazing reach and interconnectivity of the internet in quasi-religious terms, as the harbinger of democracy, human rights, transparent politics, medical cures, and the catalyst for economic justice between nations. You hear a story about somebody in an African village who put a written agreeement from a big oil company onto the web that shows the unfulfilled promises made by the company - that subsequently led to an outpouring of angry emails to the company - that led to a positive course of corrective actions by the oil company.....and it does seem like the web is a pretty magical place where Davids can slay Goliaths and Right can conquer Might.

But it's important to remember that the technology is neutral and can be marshalled for any purpose. Orwell, the author of "1984," would have a heyday with the omniscient breakthroughs that Google has made, linking our individual online searches to our consumer profiles. It's important to remember that the same platitudes were exclaimed about previous communications technologies as they emerged – like radio and television. In the early years of radio, the majority of stations were operated by small decentralized, local companies, unions, churches, etc. and it looked as though everyone would have a voice. After the Rodney King beating was captured by some random person with a camcorder, it was thought that camcorders would usher in a new era of citizen journalism and empowerment. The technology HAS made a huge difference, but always as a tool, albeit an increasingly powerful tool.

Behind every social movement or viral outpouring that has occurred on the web, there is an individual or small group who dared to imagine an amazing outcome and to put the wheels into motion. The action may have been as simple as scanning and publishing an oil company document, but it mirrors the same courage and eloquent simplicity as when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus. The activists describing their web 2.0 projects at the NetSquared conference are part of that tradition, and I hope that they see that the most vital ingredient of what they have set whirling and snowballing on the world wide web, is their own creative, courageous, imagination.

photo credit:Lena Zuniga, GK3 Project Team, Global Knowledge Partnership (GKP) Secretariat

Stick of Gum?

There's a story I will never forget about Neal Cassady, the icon of the Beat Poets who later morphed into the driver of Ken Kesey's psychedelic Magic Bus. He was entering a bar in Oakland and saw what was about to be a bloody scene. Four Black men were about to pummel a White guy. Without weighing any time consuming pros and cons, Cassady jumped into the fray tapping each man on the shoulder and asking in a loud, friendly voice, with an outstretched hand: "Stick of gum?" Somehow his package of Juicy Fruit gum disarmed a tense moment and a sure beating was avoided.

Cassady's creative courage has always seemed a luminous lesson to me. One time I tried to put it into practice and failed in my delivery, but more on that mishap in a different entry someday.

Yesterday, I pulled a book of essays down from the shelf, during my sunrise insomnia session. I read about a poet named Robert Desnos who was taken by Nazis in a truck crammed with men to a gas chamber. As they stood in line awaiting their deaths, Desnos jumped about in a jocular, animated way and asked men to let him read their palms. To each one he exclaimed that he saw a long lifeline, many children, and abundant joy. As unbelievable as it seems, according to Susan Griffin's essay, the Nazi guards were amused and decided to let this group live.

Griffin goes on to say that "social movements are driven by imagination....every important social movement reconfigures the world in the imagination."

The scientist, Jacob Bronowski, who was deeply affected by what he witnessed in Hiroshima after it was leveled by The Bomb, wrote:
"Order does not display itself of itself; if it can be said to be there at all, it is not there for the mere looking. There is no way of pointing a finger or a camera at it; order must be discovered and in a deep sense it must be created. What we see as we see it is mere disorder." To me, it seems he is talking about the importance of using our imagination.

More than the power of any particular political theory to reorganize society for the common good, I put my faith in the acts of persons springing forward in courageous acts of imagination to right wrongs and act as though a precious life is in their hands to save.

A Future for Newspapers?

I guess I won't be applying to any newspapers for work even though I have a Masters degree in Broadcast Journalism and am sort of in the job-seeking market. At a forum put on by the Stanford University Department of Communication, Bill Keller, Executive Editor of the New York Times, Gary Pruit, CEO of The McClatchy (Newspaper) Co., and Harry Chandler, former co-owner of the LA Times all agreed that there was no roadmap for the hemorrhaging newspaper industry - victims of the internet and general cultural shift away from reading news - and times would get bleaker before they get brighter. Papers get 85% - 90% of their income from ads and Craigslist alone has siphened off a huge amount of that revenue stream.

Chandler, whose family sold the LA Times said there were four likely options for newspapers:
1) A dramatic amount of layoffs and buyouts
2) Diversification (for example the Washington Post bought the Kaplan SAT-Test company)
3) Leverage the brand (big newspapers have credibility that should be valuable to some other business ventures)
4) Ownership will shift toward the pro sports model where many owners do it for the ego boost etc. rather than profits

One telling statistic (relative to cutbacks) was given by Keller, who said that when the war in Iraq was just underway and Saddam was ousted there were 1,000 reporters there. Now there are 45.

Pruitt, of McClatchy, was most optimistic saying that papers have been through the same sort of cataclysmic paradigm shifts before, when radio and then TV came "online." He's confident that newspapers will find new life on the web, albeit not as profitable as the last half of the 20th century.

Writeup in the Stanford Daily

Two months ago, I organized an evening lecture/conversation with former Tech Columnist turned Citizen Journalism activist, Dan Gillmor. He was asked a similar question about the future for newspapers and was similarly vague about the immediate future before new paradigms emerge. Here's a video clip with his full response:

Falwell Meets the Maker

I've often wondered what happens when fundamentalists die and find out that if there's a god at all, it's not some old, stern white guy who's been sitting up there cheering on one particular group of humans.

Jerry Falwell: What the.......? Where's the Lord? I want to see the Lord.
God: Welcome Jerry. You were really caught up in your illusions down there weren't you?
Falwell: What's going on? Is this some kind of test? Why you're Black as coal.....and you're a Woman.
God: Jerry. I'm everyone and everything you've ever seen down there. It's all my expression. All my poem.
Falwell: Oh Lord. You've turned into a Teletubby! This must be a bad dream. I'm not officially dead yet, am I? Is this the Purgatory chamber?
God: Jerry, we don't operate any chambers or five star hotels out here. Sorry but you didn't unpack enough stuff for this trip. You'll be going back.
Jerry: Back? But that sounds like blasphemous Buddha talk.
God: Would you like a schtickel taiglach or a bissell kishka before you go?
Jerry: Lord, are you about to tell me a Jew joke? I think I've heard them all.
God: Salam Aleikem Jerry. This time around you're going to live a very holy life. You'll be a cow in India. You'll see things
much more clearly. Chow baby!

Celebrating Mom on Mother's Day

It was summer 1974, the first and only time my mom visited me in Santa Barbara. I picked her up at the little airport, a role reversal after the countless times I'd look for her gold Toyota outside baggage claim in St. Louis. Serendipitously, I'd picked up two friends hitchhiking that day and when I told them of my mother's visit, the woman gave me the key to her apartment and said we could stay there and she'd stay with her boyfriend. The visit seemed already to be blessed.

I'd just completed my B.A. at UCSB in Sociology and she was a Psychology Teacher at Florrisant Valley Community College, about to branch out and teach courses in Women's Studies and Human Sexuality. She was five years into her life as a college instructor, having moved to St. Louis with my younger brothers in the wake of divorce and twenty years in Peoria, Il. One of the many reasons I loved visiting her in St. Louis was because her apartment would be filled with food and laughter on Saturdays as people from the Orthodox community she belonged to would drop by during their Sabbath walks. A number of 20-something folks in particular liked to come and visit with her. They were drawn to her good hearted irreverence and humor. They didn't know the half of how far her lifestyle extended.

We jumped easily into a back and forth "catch-up" conversation as we made our way through Santa Barbara's tony downtown. Mom was really excited to tell me how she was spending many evenings with a mostly African-American crowd who lived in an old section of the city. At the community college she had a number of older students, and one of them had brought her into this new peer group. She said that they smoked grass and then sat around talking about art, philosophy, and politics into the wee hours. She turned to me and asked if I knew how to get some of that stuff. We took a detour and got my mom her first "lid." Then we went to the drive-in movies, toked up, and giggled our way through one or two comedies whose titles I wish I could remember.

She died a short six years later, just after her 51st birthday, on another visit to California where she saw me in San Francisco and then my brother Josh in L.A. A drunk driver hit her car head-on on Highway 1 as she was making her way down to San Diego. I used to love to talk to her on Mother's Day. One year I made her a book of quotes and pictures pasted from magazines that I've since "inherited." Though I wish I had more Mothers' Days to connect with her, I consider myself the luckiest guy in the world to have had her as Mom, role model, and friend, serving me endless amounts of my favorite Jewish foods, going with me to hear Jerry Garcia laughing and buzzed, and jumping across all manners of social and religious boundaries to live a full and multi-dimensional life.

Martial Law Coming to a Theatre Near You!

Presumably President Bush learned many lessons from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the devastation in New Orleans. Unfortunately, it appears that one of his biggest "takeaways" was the need for a President to be able to declare martial law and quell disturbance after a natural disaster and any number of other unpredictable "incidents." The Bush Administration slipped a clause into the 2006 "Defense Bill" that changed the "Insurrection Act" that has been on the books since just after the Civil War. That act spelled out the only times a president could override state governors and send in Federal troops against U.S. citizens and also take over control of the state's national guard. Though it had some vague language of its own it basically only allowed for Presidential martial law in the case of insurrection or a state's refusal to follow federal law. Now, the name of the Insurrection Act has been changed to "Enforcement of the Laws to Restore Public Order" Act and it clearly authorizes the President to impose martial law after a terrorist attack, a natural disaster, a disease outbreak, or 'other condition.'' We now have one "Decider" who can overrule governors in many different difficult situations - even if that "decider" is woefully ignorant of conditions on the ground, or just plain ignorant in general.

The governors association is against this new law and on February 7th, Senator Leahy of Vermont, introduced S1712 to ressurect the old Insurrection Act and delete the new Restore Public Order" Act. It's currently in the Judiciary Committee and the Committee of Armed Services.

The scariest thing about it is how easy it is to give up basic rights and protections guaranteed by our constitution. When you don't know how unprecedented this Bush-driven law is and how relatively untouchable, the "posse comitatus" restrictions have been, it is easy to erase its limitations on the President. In fact it's pretty easy to relinquish a myriad of constitutional liberties and protections in the aftermath of 9/11. We're getting used to the dire warning that there is a terrorist behind every Bush, and how we need to prioritize our security over our liberty. How often that seems to translate into letting the president decide what violence, surveillance, and control to employ on our behalves.

Go Warriors!!

The Golden State Warriors are fully embodying their moniker as they lay down a 200% individual and team effort in each NBA playoff game after a 12 or 13 year wait to make it past the regular season.

Sports teams so often sport a nickname like "Bears," "Lions," "Wildcats," "Chiefs," and yes, "Warriors" as though winning games is all about physical power and aggression as opposed to imagination, brains, and rhythm. I definitely prefer monikers like the Maryland Terrapins and the Oregon Ducks. My favorite was that of my own college, the Northwestern Purple Haze. Unfortunately, the school administration would not officially adopt the Jimi Hendrix-inspired moniker that the student body voted for in the early 70's, and they are still officially the Wildcats.

That said, watching the Golden State team win its last 9 out of 10 games to squeak into the playoffs on the final night of the season; watching them run up and down the court with total abandon; watching them come back and beat the Mavs in a game where they were behind by 20+ points; watching Baron Davis and Matt Barnes play through hamstring pain; watching the youngest team in the whole league and shorter per capita than most of their opponents; watching them hang together even in the two losses to the Jazz*.......you can't help but see them as Warriors... with all the associated mythical, romantic ethos. Go Warriors!!!!

*The Jazz are an exception to the nickname rule. They got the nickname in New Orleans which is one of the few places that values rhythm over power in pursuit of victory.

New Orleans Lower 9th District April '07

If the Upper 9th is a sort of Wild West, the Lower 9th is a sort of post-bomb Hiroshima. It is quiet with very few people around save for the tourists driving around with cameras like myself- over 18 months after Katrina. There are many vacant lots where houses have been razed and tall grass has reclaimed the plot after a lengthy interruption. Zac says that each time he has come to see it, there are fewer structures; more open land. Hand written, makeshift streetsigns have been put up on poles, since the old ones have vanished. The levee wall is standing again and what once was a neighborhood is now like a field splattered with misshapen houses that crumbled in on themselves or floated to new resting spots and positions. The doors are usually gone and you can look in to see washers and dryers, toilets, bicycles, couches, desks, mattresses, light fixtures overturned or jumbled together. There was a water heater that had somehow floated up to an attic. In one house you could see some clothes hanging neatly, totally anomalous to the mashed potato crunch of most everything else. It is voyeuristic, peering in to the empty broken rooms searching out the everyday articles that belonged to other people’s lives before the last hours when they had to flee or drown. Like the broken watch that was laying on a mattress, every house was a picture of time standing still and broken.

Habitat for Humanity Dedication

We went to a “Dedication” this afternoon – a celebratory ritual when a Habitat house is finished and the keys are handed over to the new owner. In this case it was in the “Musicians Village” in New Orleans that Habitat is constructing for musicians displaced by Katrina; a neighborhood of rainbow colored homes that will eventually number 80 and include a building for performances and classes. After the short, touching speeches, the 100 or so of us who came were treated to a zydeco concert by Sun Pie in front of the house with the new owner on bass guitar.

This was in the upper 9th district where my son Zac says that about 50% of the houses are vacant and mostly unlivable. Many homes have painted messages on them detailing the dates they were searched and whether animals were found or not. The surreal environment has generated a somewhat lawless environment for some who live there. Many of the Habitat houses get robbed of things during the building process. Doors have been taken off their hinges, electrical wiring pulled from the walls before the sheetrock gets installed, plumbing fixtures dismantled etc.

Parental Peak Experience

Zac addresses volunteers before work starts.




This is the Americorps and Habitat Construction Staff in New Orleans.


Peak experiences as a parent are fewer and farther between as our kids get older and move away from home (not too mention the high school drought years), but when they occur they are every bit as overwhelming and nectar-sweet. I flew to New Orleans to see Zac and meet his girlfriend Erin, arriving at 2 AM on a delayed flight. Four and a half hours later I sat in a little trailer office and watched my son meet with his Habitat for Humanity cohorts before the workday began. Throughout the day I witnessed him addressing a morning crowd of hundreds of volunteers, getting us all assigned to various crews and inspiring us about our work; answering scores of construction questions from staffpersons; juggling two overactive cell phones; dealing with vendors and delivery guys twice his age - never at a loss for good information and good humor. His leadership skills blew me away with pride.....this from the kid that did everything he could to avoid getting assigned a speaking part in his sixth grade play. I also learned a few tricks about hammering studs into place as I worked with a team of volunteers.

Then there is the indescribable pleasure of seeing him in love and being loved by a beautiful young woman, every bit as infused as he with the wonder and faith in the rush of possibilities and dreams at the dawn of adulthood. I feel feted on the darkest of chocolaty desserts that life can offer up to a 54 year old parent.

Attention Deficit Order of the Day

I remember getting chastised by a teacher in a Broadcast Journalism class (my master’s degree) for not using enough visuals in an 8-minute piece about the men who invented the atom bomb. I was amazed to be speaking with these men at all in the early 80’s and listening to their misgivings about the nuclear age they had spawned. I left the screen on each of their faces for the most part. I was told that the American audience would not sit still for a talking heads piece. She was right of course. I remember one lecturer who told us that the average length of each soundbite (the part where an interviewee speaks) in a news story had gone down from about 25 seconds to about 7 or 8 seconds. I wonder what it’s at now? Who needs an “actuality” when we can have a great-looking, smooth-talking newscaster capsulize what the interviewee said? Nowadays some of the most popular media are 2 minute viral videos passed along the internet, or 15 year olds doing a quick dance on You Tube. I predict that most of the “vanity videos” (the "Me Shows") will lose their popularity and fade to the background after the YouTube novelty wears off. But I think the mini-time-length format is here to stay. Hopefully Viacom and the other big boys won’t take it all over and net neutrality will enable a multitude of artists to reach the public via the web. Still I wish I hadn’t been so reshaped by media rhythms. I wish I could still enjoy a long-shot, thoughtful, internally luxurious Ingmar Bergman film. Maybe they’ll re-release them in two minute increments on the web.

There's a Facist Preaching in my Backyard

Last week I attended a lecture by Chris Hedges, a longtime New York Times war correspondent, and most recently, the author of "American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America." Hedges told us about his father, a Presbyterian minister in New England who tried to shut down the one local bar, but who was also a progressive, opponent of the Viet Nam war. When Chris was only 12, his father told him earnestly that if the war was still going on when he became 18, he would go to prison with him. To this day, Hedges says, that he carries a rather gloomy image of having to sit with his father in a jail cell while the war raged on.

Hedges says that there are 10's of millions of Christians who are part of the religious right, angry about taxes, entitlement programs, and government regulations in addition to the usual stuff about same sex marriage, creationism, and abortion. He said that they see the war in Iraq as part of an apocalyptic battle between Christianity and Islam. The "Christian Embassy," a Washington D.C. based fundamentalist organization has many ties in the Pentagon. Forty generals attend the weekly bible sessions. Fundamentalists account for about 50% of military chaplaincies. There is a conscious effort to infiltrate the military and law enforcement.

A number of fundamentalist organizations are fighting against hate crime legislation, because they don't want to have to reign in their diatribes against gays and lesbians and immigrants on the hundreds of radio stations they run across the country.

He says that the mainstream media are not examining this humongous story.

"Illegal" Immigration

Yesterday, I attended a forum on immigration put on by the League of Women Voters and the World Affairs Forum, held at Hewlett-Packard, one of the many high tech companies in the Silicon Valley that is deeply interested in immigration policy. Richard Hobbs, the Director of the Office of Human Relations for Santa Clara County told us that 36% of our county's population are foreign born and when you add in their children, it comes to 67% of the population. That's hard to believe from my rather "gated" perspective living in affluent Palo Alto.

In California there are nearly 3 million illegal immigrants among the 10 million foreign born, though the path for "illegals" is now taking 75% to other states with more jobs.

Hobbs made it clear that most immigrants come either because of economic desperation or because they are fleeing a dangerous political situation.

NAFTA and GATT free trade agreements have led to the loss of about 8 million jobs in Mexico across numerous sectors including farming, retail, manufacturing, and artisans. While somehow the US can subsidize its farmers to the tune of $11 billion (annually I think), NAFTA eliminates protective tariffs that used to keep US crops more expensive in Mexico. Add to that our superior productivity and bingo!, we've conquered the Mexican grocery shoppers. While the average cost per hour of a Mexican factory worker is $2.82, the average in China is now 70 cents p/hr. In Monterrey, Mexico, 80,000 factory workers have lost their jobs as corporations have moved to ever cheaper locations. Another speaker at the forum told us about a community in Mexico, famous for its tequila products. They make a good living there and nobody has ever left to illegally cross into the US.

Obviously, if we focused more on helping third world countries raise their standard of livings we wouldn't have the flow of impovershed people coming to the U.S. to clean our homes, trim our grass, and flip our burgers. Some of that translates to FAIR trade rather than FREE trade agreements. Debt forgiveness, an end to agribusiness subsidies, a world minimum wage, and a world MAXIMUM wage were all mentioned by Hobbs on the solutions side of the equation.

Regarding political refugees, there are now 12 million people worldwide who are languishing in refugee camps. This doesn't impact the U.S. as much because most of them are an ocean away from our Statue of Liberty. For example, there are now 1 million Iraqis displaced by the war. So far, the U.S. has decided to allow 7,000 into our country. During the Reagan years when Salvadorans and Nicaraguans would come to escape death squads, we'd send them back if we caught them, because we were supporting the governments that spawned those death squads.

As is often the case, the average age at this kind of event was over 60. At least the room was packed with over 200 gray heads.

Fractured Headline 1

Headline in 3/24/07 Palo Alto Daily News: "Professor wins wastewater award"

Will he keep it on his mantle?

A Little Paunch Goes A Long Way

This man, Ralph Wenzel, featured in yesterday's edition of the San Francisco Chronicle is a rather amazing athlete. In 3 months time he swam 356 miles, logging nearly four hours a day in the very cold SF Bay. Perhaps he will become a pin-up for countless middle aged, slightly paunchy guys like myself. We are trend setters moving away from the chiseled look of male athletes and movie stars who are probably hiding a steroid or eating disorder.

I remember working shirtless in my back yard garden one afternoon while one of my sons and his girlfriend were in the kitchen. They were about 15 at the time. As I walked by the kitchen window, I overhead Alex explain to Charlotte, "All middle aged men have pot bellies." I could only guess what Charlotte had said to prompt Alex's reply. I skipped my before-bed "Ben and Jerry's" that night.

Sobering Statistic 1

Translators in Iraq are targeted infidels.
According to the Titan Company that hires private contractors in Iraq, so far 250 translators have been killed since the occupation began.

(source: This American Life radio show)

"Animal Farm"

Back in the early 60's in Peoria, Illinois, I was a clueless 5th and 6th grader, but I still knew who were the popular kids and who were the kids with "cooties." Everybody knew that stuff. Sharon Sturm was the prettiest girl and she had four other pretty girls who went wherever she did. Back then madras prints from India were the coolest shirts and the five of them would frequently come to school wearing the exact same print. Back then, dressing alike was cool, at least in Peoria. The popular guys would ride bikes in a pack by each of the girls' houses as a sort of daily ritual. They called it "making the rounds."

Sharon's group pretty much decided which girls in the class had cooties. The girls with cooties included a couple of kids from foreign countries along with some ugly girls who were either fat or had braces or wore clothes that were obviously picked out by their mothers or their minister. You'd know if somebody had been added to that group if their house would get TP'd during the night. TP stands for toilet paper. Many of us knew when it was coming because there was an abandoned shed near Sharon's house and they'd start stockpiling rolls of TP there for days before it would happen. But nobody ever told on the popular girls.

There was another girl, Debbie Jeffords, who didn't have the looks, but definitely had the smarts. Every year the teacher would choose her to direct the class play and she even got to help write it. Her mother drove an Oldsmobile and often picked her up for some kind of after school activity. That stood out in a neighborhood where most kids' dads worked at the Caterpillar assembly plant. Not unlike Sharon, she had some girlfriends who followed her around too.

Everything changed when we got back for school after summer vacation following sixth grade. The girls had boobs. And all the boys - even the clueless ones - noticed. The girls wore bras and some of the daring boys would snap them as a way to flirt. Believe it or not, one of the only girls in the class who didn't get any boobs was Sharon Sturm. The boys noticed and some jokes were made at her expense. Sharon's deficit was not lost on Debbie Jeffords and she wrote a mean, but clever song that you could hear her friends singing over by the basketball court.

One fall day all of Sharon's girlfriends showed up at school with matching lime green windbreakers that were given to them by Debbie Jeffords who was holding court right in the center of all the popular girls. That's how it went for the next few months and the boys altered their route when they made the rounds to reflect the new pecking order.

One day in March when the trees were still bare, Sharon noticed a bunch of toilet paper rolls in the shed by her house as she walked home alone. The next day she confronted two of her former cronies on the field before school and demanded an explanation. She may have lost her popularity, but she could still fluster all those other girls when she yelled in their faces. They assured her that the TP was destined for the house of a new foreign kid, the first Japanese person most of us had ever seen outside of TV and war movies. Her family came in January and her mother walked her to school every morning, holding an umbrella on sunny days. That sparked a bunch of "retread" jokes. Sharon didn't believe them. She'd had a lot of time to stew about Debbie Jeffords and think how hateful she was. She'd been thinking that Debbie would try something really evil against her.

Sharon passed notes to several of the cootie-kids inviting them to her house after school. Three of them showed up, looking pretty sheepish and uncomfortable. Sharon told them they could end cootie-bashing and teach a lesson to those who acted superior. She told them Debbie Jeffords and her gang were planning a TP attack against her and she wanted them to help her thwart it. Sharon had them enlist older brothers and cousins to show up at an ambush site she'd specify. Sharon was no slouch when it came to planning combat. Her plan worked to perfection except for the consequences. By keeping tabs on the TP stockpile she figured out the night the prank would happen. The older boys, armed with rocks, were in perfect position as the girls emerged with their bags of TP, and showered them with an attack they wouldn't soon forget.

Unfortunately, one girl got hit squarely in the eye and an ambulance had to be called. She lost her vision in that eye. Police came to our school and subsequently to the high school where a couple of the boys attended. Three kids ended up going to juvenile hall which we hadn't even heard of before. There were parent meetings and it was a big mess. Sharon Sturm ended up leaving our school and going to a Catholic one. About a year later I heard she had developed pretty big boobs.....

(This story is the blogger's feeble attempt to create an Orwellian "Animal Farm" parable that speaks to the previous post about the Cold War.)

Cold War Back By Popular Demand

Somewhat buried on Page 13 of the SF Chronicle, February 20th, was an article about an escalating war of words that could lead to a return of the Cold War between the U.S. and Russia - complete with freaky arms race and spiraling mistrust amidst growing piles of WMD.

Apparently, the U.S. has convinced Poland and the Czech Republic to let it install 10 "defensive" missiles and a radar site, ostensibly to protect against an attack from a "middle eastern" country. Russia sees it as another step in arming its old satellite countries against it and that it represents just a foot in the door for the U.S. with more offensive missiles to follow. They have threatened to respond by producing intermediate range nuclear missiles to aim back at Poland and the Czech Republic even though they were banned by the Gorbachev / Reagan agreements in 1987. One observer quoted in the article, says that Russia perceives this as payback for selling missiles to Iran and Syria. In what appears to be a reassurance to Russians, the Polish Prime Minister made the unsettling statement that "the missile defense is not directed against any normal state."

I find it totally unsettling that the Dr. Strangelovian-missile-advocates have some operative definition of which states fail the "normalcy" test. It's equally unsettling that any government sees itself as an arms merchant to other countries. Has the current messy tragedy in Iraq made all the players nostalgic for the Cold War?

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Talks

Pentagon sources have confirmed that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has confessed to 28 different terrorist plots, many of which never happened. He has also confessed to orchestrating much of the tagging that has defaced New York City subways, the rapid decimation of amphibians worldwide, and the theft of Barbara Bush's pocketbook at a Denny's restaurant in 1968. Additionally, there are strong indications that he is the mastermind of the Crips Gang and Gitmo interrogators continue to ply him with glazed donuts (his weakness) and foot massages to extract his remaining dark secrets.