David Weir

Short Break

2009-12-08T09:44:00.000-08:00

Friends:

I am suspending this blog for a bit. I will be back.

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Obama's Afghan Policy is the Best of Poor Choices

2009-12-06T16:41:00.001-08:00

Photo Courtesy of the White House

After a few days investigating what went into President Barack Obama's decision to send more troops to Afghanistan, I have come to the conclusion he chose the best policy option open to him.

The previous administration started the war in Afghanistan, of course, in the weeks following the 9/11 attacks. The stated reason for the invasion was to hunt down Osama bin-Laden and al-Qaeda, but the U.S. military let the terror network leader slip away after cornering him at Tora Bora late in 2001.

I've not been able to locate any persuasive explanation for that stupendous failure. It is one of the greatest tactical errors in modern military history, frankly.

Meanwhile, over the past eight years, the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan has morphed into a dubious nation-building exercise and, increasingly, an attempt to curtail the return of the native Afghan Taliban movement, which held power when the Bush administration invaded.

To my mind, there is no chance for the U.S. to "win" this war. But, much as happened in Vietnam, there is a good chance of "losing" it. Obama clearly feels painted in a corner by the circumstances he inherited.

Those attacking him now include many who naively believe everything any President does is political. No President is that cynical. Obama is Commander-in-Chief. He's received more in-depth briefings about this conflict than any predecessor about any inherited war over his first 12 months in office.

He wants a troop surge, and he wants it faster than the military felt it could deliver it. Then he wants a timed draw-down of troops faster than anyone believes will be possible.

Finally, he says that the conditions on the ground in Afghanistan will determine the actual timetable for withdrawal.

You could find aspects of this plan to disagree with, whatever your politics. But if you take the time to study what he is trying to do, and balance all known factors, you may come to the same conclusion as I have:

Obama is doing the right thing.

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Blogging for B&N

2009-12-05T18:57:00.001-08:00

I've posted to various blogs over the years. Recently, Barnes & Noble asked me to write a post about the move from physical to digital books.

Here is the result.

The best part about blogging is when you get comments. In that spirit, I want to thank those who comment at this blog. This is, of course, a relatively obscure blog, with somewhere around 50-100 visitors a day.

B&N, by contrast, is obviously a major platform, and therefore dozens of people posted comments behind my piece there.

Please visit the link, and if you so choose, add a comment!

Thanks.

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If Loneliness is Contagious, So is Hope

2009-12-04T14:28:00.000-08:00

Wow, I've let almost an entire workweek get away from me without posting here -- my bad.

I have spent a bunch of that week downtown, attending a conference and meeting with more promising media startups.

Although this is the worst of times to be a professional journalist (we're all out of work), it's a fascinating time from the perspective of changing communication habits.

Take blogs. A decade ago, hardly anyone was blogging.

Today, millions of people blog. It's become a major way of connecting with one another in an otherwise fragmenting world.

According to a report in the Washington Post recently, loneliness is contagious.

That caught my eye, because I've often noticed the effects, some of them quite subtle, people's emotional states have on each other. The studies in the report covered by the Post indicate that one person's loneliness can be transmitted to others via a variety of pathways.

At the core of our humanity is our capacity for empathy. Just sensing the deep loneliness another feels triggers a response inside many of us. We can so easily imagine feeling the same way, and sometimes, of course, we do.

Isolation, alienation, loneliness -- these are major social diseases of modern society. To address them, there is another tool within our grasp and that is hopefulness, optimism.

I observe that expressing one's essential hopefulness if contagious as well. Some may dismiss you as lacking the appropriate degree of cynical realism about our actual condition if you act hopeful, but others will thank you for making their day a little brighter.

With that in mind, I'll try to end this post, on a cold winter's day, with few tangible amenities available to view, on a hopeful note. Things may get worse, it's true; yet they may get better.

I'm opting for the latter view...

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As a Decade Ends

2009-11-30T19:12:00.000-08:00

Remember the fears over the Y2K?

That is how this decade started out. I was living in Takoma Park, Md., at the time, and I remember purposefully filling my car with gas before driving the family over to my sister's house in Vienna, Va., early on New Year's Eve night, 1999.

Rumors and reports of impending disaster had been circulating for months, and those given to apocalyptic visions were hunkered down, awaiting the inevitable.

But it never happened.

Having quite a few engineer friends, I considered the prospect of a global Internet failure remote, but I filled up that car anyway, just in case.

Where exactly I was thinking of taking my young family to escape whatever horrors might have ensued a Y2K disaster now eludes my faltering memory. Probably getting to my sister's house was as safe a haven as I could have imagined.

After all, thanks to my nephew, they had the best toy gun arsenal I had witnessed up until that time.

***

It's good to be able to sit up and walk around tonight, after a pinched nerve laid me low over the weekend, after our 1,000+ road trip through Arizona last week.

But I'm blessed by a body that (still) recovers quickly, and by tomorrow sometime, I should be back to normal.

***

A much more shocking event than any Y2K scenario awaited America as the decade, century and millenium pivoted, of course, and that was to occur on September 11th, 2001.

The Bush administration had every piece of information it needed to have to be able to recognize the magnitude of the threat from al-Qaeda, but the record shows they ignored all of it.

Nevertheless, once hit, this country came together and started striking back.

That is the problem. We reacted like the hurt monster we, in fact, were, and still are. We struck out at the people we perceived as our enemies.

Eight years later, tomorrow night President Obama will announce a troop "surge" of 30,000 young men and women who will lay their lives on the line in Afghanistan.

Remember, I know Afghanistan.

I'll listen to his arguments, but for me, and for many others, he has a skeptical audience to convince this is the wisest course at this point in our troubled history.

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500 Miles Away From Home

2009-11-29T21:04:00.000-08:00

There is something about a road trip that reveals the deepest truths about this country, as wandering minstrels, poets, and ordinary folk have been saying for as long as we've been here.

Here is my friend trying to copy a cactus that is probably twice as old as she is, because this particular species doesn't develop "arms" until it's been around for at least 75 years, according to my big sister.

America is a huge country. Once you hit the road, you can drive forever, it seems. You'll encounter all sorts of options along the way, one of which, in the West, includes Indian reservations.

I'm especially sensitive to this tonight because I am in the middle of reading Antonio D'Ambrosio's intriguing book, "A Heartbeat and a Guitar: Johnny Cash and the Making of Bitter Tears.

We European settlers have never really come to grips with what we did to the Native people who were here when we arrived, and remain here, in great numbers, to this day.

I am thinking of the great folk song, "This Land is Your Land" tonight, but I don't think it is meant for the likes of you or me.

The only items I bought on this trip were from Native stores, where the proceeds went to Natives. I'm not a purist, I'm a realist. If you are going to move along the great highways in our West, you are moving through sacred ground.

Your vehicle will be polluting the air, and you will be enjoying the experience, as I did. But it is equally important to give something -- anything -- back to the people whose land this always has been and always will be.

Why? Because they do not pretend to "own" it. They know something we Europeans need to learn and absorb deeply. You cannot own Mother Earth. The best you can do is dwell here, for a while.

It's all about respect. That is something the great Johnny Cash understood, but a lesson the rest of us still are aching to learn.

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Hoover Dam & bin-Laden: We Foot the Bill

2009-11-27T18:01:00.000-08:00

Half an hour outside of Las Vegas sits Hoover Dam, an engineering marvel from the 1930s. It was built by Warren Bechtel, the founder of the Bechtel Corp., headquartered in San Francisco.

The Dam was on al-Qaeda's target list, so after 9/11, the federal government decided to build a bridge 1,000 feet high over the dam to reduce its vulnerability to attacks, such as by truck bombs.

Scheduled to be completed next year, the construction project rivals the dam in its complexity and grand scale.

I don't recall seeing a more impressive bridge at the partway-built stage anywhere before.

If Osama bin-Laden accomplished nothing else by his terror attacks, he has cost the U.S. taxpayer a frightful amount of money trying to secure our borders and our most vulnerable national assets.

A visit to the dam during the current recession is a sobering reminder of that sad fact.

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Sedona

2009-11-26T18:51:00.000-08:00

If you want to take a road trip, you could do a lot worse than drive around in Arizona.

That's what I've been doing this week, with a friend. I've been to the state maybe a half dozen times over the years, but never with as much freedom to explore as we had this week.

These photos are from what many in these parts would agree is one of the most spiritual places in this state: Sedona.

If you are moved by nature's endless ability to inspire, go to Sedona. It is a desert town with enough water to support deciduous plants and fancy resorts. But we didn't go to the fancy resorts.

If you are on a budget, (as I always am) there are lovely and affordable places to stay in this town, at least briefly. The best thing, when you arrive after dark, is to wake up and see the outcroppings that ring this place.

There is so much variety in these formations, each of which have special names I will not burden you with here, and so many different angles from which to view them, that Sedona is a photographer's dream.

It is even more a realm for painters.

Like the Grand Canyon, the sun lights the stage in Sedona. As the sun moves in its inexorable arc, ever higher in the early part of any year, and always lower in the latter half, it illuminates each and every crack and crag and cave in these uniquely red rocks.

Red is a color that elicits strong feelings inside all people. As a writing teacher, one of my favorite exercises is to tell my students that I will name a color, ask them to write what they feel about that color in five minutes, and then hand that writing in.

My favorite color for this exercise is red.

The answers to that particular question tell a lot about the writer's age, class, gender, ethnicity, national heritage, but most of all, about that writer's imagination.

As a writer, I never presume to have any useful words for any other person about their personal quest for spirituality. That is as deeply personal as any journey one takes. But my feeling while in Sedona is that this could be a very good place indeed for you to visit if you are searching in that sense.

Meanwhile, since this is Thanksgiving Day, I'd just like to say thanks for Sedona.

And thanks for red.

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Happy Thanksgiving

2009-11-25T20:38:00.001-08:00

I hope everyone reading these words has a sense of peace and fellowship on this holiday.

Celebrating with my older sister and husband here in lovely Arizona.

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The Grand Canyon

2009-11-24T21:41:00.000-08:00

Through my eyes, recently...

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Road Tripping: Route 66

2009-11-24T20:44:00.000-08:00

These images are from a recent drive I took along the western end of the old Route 66.

Some of these towns, and cafes, and tourist stops could well disappear in the coming decade.

Not many folks continue to live in these small towns, since the freeways bypassed them.

Maybe, in the end, the only ones left will be those who originally lived here, the people the early Europeans called "Indians." After all, they are still here, just as they have always been.

But Route 66 for most Americans is about nostalgia, not Natives.

I understand.

The '50s. Only problem is, I didn't feel comfortable in the '50s, and I was a kid then. The style may have been great, but it was rock 'n roll that freed us from all of that.

Remember?

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My Musical Genius (Who Insists He Isn't)

2009-11-22T21:56:00.000-08:00

I have a kid who hates any kind of public attention. Thus he hates to perform in plays, he hates giving speeches, he hates pretty much any situation that places him in the eye of others.

On the other hand, he (like all of us) can only avoid being seen for who we really are for a limited period of time. Just being alive and on the planet means you'll be noticed.

The cliche is "don't hide your light under the bushel." (The final word is often shortened to "bush" in colloquial American.)

But so many special people try to do that, at all ages and stages.

In fact, it is the shyest kids who invariably turn out to be the most interesting adults, on many levels.

As much as I respect those who somehow are born with, or acquire, superior social skills, I also have to say that the deepest spirits, the oldest souls, the most intriguing people I've encountered along the way were, at least as children awkward, unsure, and probably just sort of weird.

Although he would disagree, I know that my little guy is deeply gifted as a musician. He doesn't understand how good he is because there is not enough social value around this particular skill from his peers for him to let that information in.

You know the best part about today? His big brother, whose gifts are in athletics, was even more nervous than he was. He sat upstairs in the balcony, worrying, waiting for his little brother to take the stage.

When he finally did, he was masterful. If you like music, or even if you don't, please watch this clip and tell me what you think. Remember, since it is at YouTube, to let the whole clip load before you try to watch it, for a better viewing experience.

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My Little Ecologist

2009-11-21T17:50:00.003-08:00

In my youth, I was an activist for many causes. Pro-civil rights, anti-war, pro-women's rights, pro-gay rights, anti-grand-jury abuse...but my first and truest cause, the one that has endured my entire life was, is, and always will be environmentalism.

To me, wandering free through nature was the greatest pleasure of my childhood. I was a lonely child, not because I never had friends, but probably because I was a loner by nature.

My natural love has always been for trees, plants, birds, fish, other animals, the sky, clouds...Of course I love people, too, but my feelings toward people are complicated by the way we, collectively, treat our common planet.

This is why the so-called "debate" over climate change is so offensive. It really doesn't matter how much our role as an obscenely over-populated species has contributed to the indisputable warming of Earth.

What matters is that we have not treated our home with respect.

My youngest child probably knows very little about the earlier stages of my career. I do not show my kids my books or articles, unless they ask. That work occurred a long time ago.

But, in her own powerful way, she is an activist who wants to make an impact on environmental grounds. She's only eleven. She's already a vegetarian. She also likes to use the visual arts to express her beliefs.

So this is the work she did today. It adorns our front fence, as the photos below capture.

Back when there were hippies, stoned on dope but aware of karma, everyone would say, "what goes around, comes around." I hope that is true.

At least in my little world, it feels true tonight.

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Colin Powell Live in San Francisco

2009-11-19T19:36:00.000-08:00

Gen. Colin Powell delivered a speech earlier this evening to 8,000 people from the big stage at the Moscone Center in downtown San Francisco. I sat with other journalists in the front row of the press section, not far from where the 85-year-old former Secretary of State and Chair of the Joint Chiefs was standing.

I'll get to the substance of his talk in a moment, but first, I decided to make this the first event that I would Tweet live, at least partially. So here are the six entries I made over at Twitter while watching Powell perform for over an hour:

hotweir
Sitting a few feet from Colin Powell speaking at Dreamforce in SF...
about 1 hour ago from web

hotweir
Thanking Salesforce for 1-1-1 philanthropy model.
about 1 hour ago from web

hotweir
Colin Powell: It's a pleasure at my age to be -- anywhere."
about 1 hour ago from web

hotweir
Powell joking about how people Tweet "he's walking through the room..." BTW he's walking across the stage.
about 1 hour ago from web

hotweir
Powell: Prez Obama has changed the way the world thinks of us in under 1 year
8 minutes ago from web

hotweir
Powell sounds like he's running for office!
4 minutes ago from web

Okay, now we have that out of the way, let me summarize Powell's talk this way. As a journalist, I've witnessed many political stump speeches, but never one by someone this old who couldn't conceivably be running for office any longer.

Yet, to my ears, Powell was hitting on issue after issue the way politicians do on the campaign trail. Which seemed odd because his audience was a bunch of sales people at a sales conference organized by an extremely successful sales technology company, Saleforce.com.

Powell didn't say anything about sales, and he said little about technology (other than he has loved it all of his life).

Instead he talked about his own life, his storied career, a variety of political issues, the geo-political situation as he views it today, and his concept of leadership.

I'm only going to recount the parts that resonated with me, because a transcript will no doubt be available somewhere online, maybe at salesforce.com, and I also am not going to recount the endless series of inspirational cliches, which the sales folks may have loved but which I found, frankly, condescending.

Here are a few things I jotted down in my Reporter's Notebook, when I wasn't Tweeting.

Powell talked about how it felt to wake up in his home the first day of his last big transition, after he resigned from his position as Secretary of State. He spoke of an "emptiness...an intellectual and emotional gap" inside himself.

After all, he had just gone from being one of the most important and powerful people in the world...to just another guy.

I found his initial solution to this dilemma a little puzzling: "I bought a Corvette."

Eventually, however, he said that he found more meaning in various philanthropic and entrepreneurial activities, so I began to perk up again. He said that in his travels around the country, where he delivers many speeches like tonight's, he is amazed by all the "optimism and confidence" he encounters among us, the regular American people he meets along the way.

This is true. We are an optimistic people. That is part of the American spirit. So he got that one right.

He also got this line right: "I only wish I could bottle that up and take it back to Washington and pour it over the heads of all of the politicians."

Guaranteed applause line. I clapped, that's for sure.

I thought his most passionate, and admirable observations were about the state of public education in America. As one of our most prominent African-American leaders, he clearly deplores the continuing disaster that leads 50 percent of our minority kids to drop out of school before graduating from high school.

He called it a "moral catastrophe."

He then pivoted to his philosophy of leadership (nothing new here) before finally turning to the world stage.

You know, it began to get a bit strange at this point. Here is a man who has sat at the peak of power inside the most powerful government the world has ever known. The view from that vantage point is that we (the U.S.) don't really have much to worry about.

In Powell's view, there are 6 billion people in the world who are basically on "our" side, in that they are pursuing largely peaceful ways of getting richer. His definition of our way is capitalism, electoral democracy, as opposing to acting like Communists or terrorists.

That leaves, by his count, only about 150 million people (mainly in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, North Korea, and the Middle East) who "are causing us all the trouble."

Now, I haven't checked his math, but it is clear that from the geo-political perspective one develops while flying around in that dedicated 757 that Powell once called his own, there are only a few trouble-makers left in this world, and their days, one way or another, are numbered.

I'll admit it. This kind of freaked me out, because I think he both underestimates the nuances of global diplomacy and underestimates the depth of the actual problems in a world where most people still go to bed cold, hungry, and in wretched condition.

But Powell was ready to move on. Here, the man's formidable intellect (even though he was a 2.0 student in college) kicked into gear, as well as his truly moderate, centrist political sensibility. I think this is the Colin Powell most of us find extremely attractive.

He wove together economics, energy, and the environment (what I called "The Three E's" last year in a series of posts here) into a strong analysis of the forces now driving world events outside of the "trouble spots" he outlined above.

He spoke out in favor of developing alternative sources of energy and in favor of the U.S. taking a strong stand toward intervention against global climate change.

Finally, he struck a chord with people like me by noting that America's diversity is the "source of our strength."

I hope I have done the General justice. Some of what he said inspired me, some did not impress me, some frightened me, a few self-deprecatory remarks endeared me. I just hope, if I ever happen to reach his age, that I can perform as well as he did, as long as he did, on a public stage with as much energy as he showed tonight.

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Photo courtesy of Junko Sasaki.

What if we could all just switch sides?

2009-11-17T20:00:00.001-08:00

Lots of people come here to give talks. It's like that in all big cities, but a citizen seriously committed to finding out as much as possible about a wide variety of topics could do a lot worse than sample what our city has to offer.

At San Francisco's Commonwealth Club Monday night, for example, a panel debated "The Future of Books."

One of the speakers was Dan Clancy, who is the chief engineer at Google Books, which is a controversial effort to scan millions of out of print books and make them available in digital form to anyone who wants to access them. (Most will have to be bought, but some will be free.)

One of the most prominent opponents of a proposed settlement of a class-action suit against this Google effort is Dr. Pamela Samuelson of U-C, Berkeley. She has demonstrated in a series of interventions how Google and the parties to the lawsuit could improve it for the good of all, but have not done so.

Clancy and Samuelson have obviously met often in public debating this issue and remain cordial and respectful toward one another. But they are also on an intellectual collision course, as the case wends its way through the courts.

Watching these two impressive people struggle with the issues that divide them got me to wondering: What if they switched sides? You know, like in Debate Club.

What if Google hired Samuelson and Berkeley hired Clancy.

Give them a year to get used to their new digs (and perks) and then have them meet again.

To tell you the truth, as I see it, neither of these two would change much. And, to be fair, their skill sets (she is an expert in law and copyright; he is an engineer) could not simply be swapped, so my fantasy could never, in fact, come true.

But the point is, from my experience, you argue from the interest that you represent. If your boss is a search engine, you are representing a search engine. A university is a slightly different kind of boss, but from my years inside Berkeley and Stanford, I can tell you there are certain pressures that come down from above there, as well.

Anyway, it was a nice event at the Commonwealth Club, which has been presenting lectures and panels for over a century now, here by the Bay.

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Bill Ayres and Bernardine Dohrn, Good Americans

2009-11-16T21:12:00.000-08:00

Listening to Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn speak yesterday at the Green Festival here in San Francisco, I couldn't help but think back to last year's absurd attempt by the Republican Party to link then-candidate Barack Obama with terrorism, via a bridge with this couple's past.

The layers of irony here are that these are two extremely privileged people from rich families who are highly educated and have devoted their entire adult lives to helping other people.

For a relatively brief period of their youth, perhaps because they came from such sheltered backgrounds, they flirted with what they thought was "revolution," and participated in a bunch of activities anyone from a lower class background, such as mine, could have told them would turn out to be unsuccessful and counter-productive.

Though a fellow son of the Midwest, and a University of Michigan student like Ayres, our paths never really crossed until yesterday, though of course I was aware of him, and attended some meetings as he and others were forming a precursor group of the ill-fated Weather Underground fantasy.

But, after their speeches yesterday, I briefly encountered him outside the hall, touched his arm and said, "Nice job, Bill."

That's it, I'm sure, the only contact I will ever have with Bill Ayres, but had we had a bit longer together, I would have also said these things:

"Thank you for being funny and self-deprecating. If anyone on the purported 'right' in this country had even a fraction of your sense of humor, many other Americans might become conservatives, because all our collective instincts hew in that direction. But, no, the only laughter at self we ever encounter comes from the outsiders on the left. (Mike Huckabee is probably the lone exception on the right, which is why I liked him, as well.)"

"That said, thank you for reminding us that we, those of us who share progressive ideals, are actually the majority in this country, even though for some reason we act, most of the time, as if we were outside of the mainstream.You and Bernardine reminded me today that we actually are the mainstream. It is the right-wing that is living on the margins of the new America."

"Thank you, most of all, for the obvious love you and your wife have for each other. She, too, is a gifted speaker and activist. You both are, clearly, loving parents and grandparents."

For my part, I feel lucky, as an American, that we have people like Bill Ayres and Bernardine Dohrn, among us, still working hard and speaking out about what truly matters if we are to become a truly great nation, not just one that throws its military and financial weight around like a bully on the world's playground.

I'll repeat something I wrote a year ago. I'd love to have dinner with Bill and Bernardine. They have much to say about our society, where it has been and where it is headed.

Plus, I'm quite sure that if it was safe for him to say so, President Obama would agree with me, but he can't and he won't, not until he leaves office and rejoins the rest of us still trying to organize our communities to transform this nation into a true Democracy...which, due to class, it is not tonight, as I write these words.

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You Win Some, You Lose Some

2009-11-15T19:01:00.001-08:00

Whether you are a parent or not, or your kid competes or not, there are lessons to be learned from kid sports.

Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose.

Every now and again, your team reaches the championship game of whatever division or level to which you have been assigned. That is what happened to my youngest child yesterday. They played well. They lost. This photo is from late in the game, and you can see she was still competing.

As I've written here before, the best thing about competitive sports for kids is learning about how to lose.

Can you guess how these girls reacted yesterday as their season ended? They cheered. They jumped and yelled and shouted their team chant as if they had won the game. The other team watched them with open mouths, not believing.

If there is a lesson, it is this: Being truly part of a team is so special, that it has a value that none of us could ever calculate.

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San Francisco: A Love Story

2009-11-12T19:36:00.000-08:00

Over the course of an adult lifetime spent mostly based here in San Francisco, I've witnessed the transformation of its population by continuous waves of new arrivals, mainly immigrants from Asia and Central America, and by young, artistic or entrepreneurial migrants.

I came here as one of the second type, at age 24, never having lived in a big city before. So San Francisco is, for me, the prototype for a city, even though I realize, through the massive number of trips I've made to other cities on this continent and around the world, that this place is typical of nowhere!

No, San Francisco in unique, but you can find other somewhat similar venues if you consider only a few of its strengths -- climate, physical beauty, architectural heritage, racial and ethnic diversity, collective intelligence, radical culture, nightlife, cuisine, liberal politics, wealth, entrepreneurial spirit, historical significance -- and I could go on and on, but not all of them.

Nobody except us have it all.

I do love this place. But the main source of my love is a belief in the ability of people to find renewal here, by the Bay, next to the mighty Pacific, buffeted by the whitest fog and bluest sky imaginable, not to mention the purest air.

A week ago tonight, I stopped by a local club, in the Mission, where a singer friend of mine was performing, an author was reading, and a photographer was signing copies of his photos. All of this was going on inside one small club just off Mission Street, with a cover price of $12.

If you've never tasted San Francisco's brand of culture, but want to, contact me and I'll be happy to give you a top ten list of "do not miss" ways to begin to understand how we live here -- not how the national media says we live, not how the talk-show maniacs who demonize us say we live, not the comedians -- but us, the residents of the best city in America, bar none.

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Working Holiday: How It All Fits Together

2009-11-11T10:03:00.000-08:00

It's a national holiday today, so I can take it off from work. Funny thing about freedom, though, it doesn't always work out the way you'd hoped. Freed from my dreary routine, I decided to take a walk.

Taking my camera, I figured this was a chance to enrich the "pending SI" file I maintain on my laptop. That is where upcoming photos of the streets around me are stored for my photo blog, Sidewalk Images.

Today, however, we came up empty, my camera and me. We saw all the assorted stuff -- plants, trash, cars, people, pets, fixtures, buildings with their slants and angles -- but we couldn't take any photos.

So, I did what I had to do. I published no image, just my admission of the failure of obtaining any image.

Turns out photographers can lose their voice also.

Since I haven't been eating much lately, and in celebration of the holiday, I had steak and eggs for breakfast. On my recent walk with friends in Mill Valley, I'd secured a handful of Laurel Bay leaves, which I grilled the sirloin in.

Steak?

I got it cheap. Safeway has these periodic sales, where you can get them for a buck each. The nice thing about bay leaves is they not only infuse the meat with taste, they aromatize your entire house.

A natural air freshener.

So now I sit here, back from my empty walk, with an empty day and an empty agenda. The silence again closes in around me, and the writing voices erupt. "Do this!"

"No, do that!"

It's Veteran's Day, a time to honor all of those who have served our nation, even when the cause wasn't a just one. They never got to choose; they followed orders. They were brave even when they didn't know whether it mattered.

Maybe it always matters to be brave. Courage comes in many forms, large and small. It's hard to be brave enough to put yourself out there, to do what you can, even to be free.

My camera is held together by duct tape, anyway. It's really hard to take photos anymore. The duct tape stretches, and the photo-taking fails. If only I could use duct tape to fix all the other parts of my life that are broken, solving this mess would be easy.

But something tells me it's not going to be easy, not this time.

A Lonely Engagement

2009-11-10T19:54:00.000-08:00

There are patterns everywhere.

The trick is to locate and identify the patterns in our own lives, especially the destructive ones.

Last night, after hours of work, I discovered that this is what the novel I'm writing is about, apparently.

Each time I go back in and open up the file, I rewrite it slightly from the top.

(This has long been my habit as a writer. I write very quickly, but then, edit, edit, edit until the draft feels right.

(Not so much here, of course. A blog is meant to stay informal, looser...)

But the novel, which is still in its early stages, is about a journey through time and space, but much more critically, through the maze of events and relationships that either reveal or conceal the necessary degree of self-knowledge to say, write a book.

It's an addictive activity, once you start, but it occasionally turns brutal. The only way this book ever can succeed, in my eyes, (forget financial success), is if I can attain a degree of emotional honesty that normally proves too intense to sustain.

At some point, we all want to retreat back to the states of denial and articles of faith that normally permit us to live out our routines without thinking too hard about it all. The problem is no one ever writes a good book of the sort I am attempting now without setting these regular routines aside, and pushing further into places most of us, especially me, rarely wishes to go.

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Morning Dew, Afternoon Light

2009-11-09T12:31:00.000-08:00

My 8th grader and I went to the big public school enrollment fair the other day. He cracks me up.

"Let's just go in there, grab the applications, and get out of there, okay?"

Once inside a massive hall, the noise was overpowering. Parents and kids pushed toward tables manned by volunteers. The first person I saw was the principal of his brother's high school, a man with a perpetual smile -- an optimist.

I don't recall any of the principals of my schools ever being optimists. They seemed more like prison guards.

My kid hung back while I exchanged pleasantries with the smiling principal; he hung back again when I greeted a bunch of kids wearing beanies from the school that is his top choice.

It's the school with the reputation (and record) of being the top academic high school in these parts.

He sat in the back row of a short question-and-answer session offered by that school. I asked if he had any questions; he said no. So I asked one, about the nature of the "personal essay" that is part of the application process.

I think it is odd that a B+, a B-, or a B all count as a 3.0 grade. When I was a professor at Stanford a few years ago, I used a pretty complicated mathematical scale to award different numbers for those letter grades.

But, to get into a high school, you could earn all A-'s and have a 4.0 GPA.

While we were driving home, he was studying the applications carefully, reading parts of them out-loud. This is an attention to detail that bodes well for him getting into the school of his choice.

That, plus the fact that he very rarely gets a "-" behind his A's.

***

Life in my house goes quickly from a noisy hub of chaos to a venue so quiet you could hear a pin drop. The strokes of the keys on this laptop compete with the ticking of a wall clock to remind me that I live alone, it is chilly outside, and we are in the midst of enduring the shortest days of our year.

The bottom of time.

The holidays now approach, a time of dread some years; occasionally also still of joy. I think that, for me at least, I must have been better at living in denial in order to enjoy the holidays in the past.

Given the recession, and the state of my own disarray, not to mention that of my profession, maybe this year I'll focus on celebrating small triumphs, like being able to push out this blog post.

Yay!

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What You Saw At The Beach

2009-11-08T18:14:00.000-08:00

These shots are from today, on San Francisco's western shore. If you click on them, the images become bigger. These images like that (to be clicked)...

Self Image, Ocean Beach

Garden Soup on an Autumn Day

2009-11-08T16:20:00.000-08:00

My friend noticed this as we arrived at the Polo Fields -- a shaft of sunlight in the woods near the soccer fields.

The field also looked surreal in the early morning light. The game didn't go well, for the girls. They lost, 0-3. But the playoffs are not over yet and they'll play again next week.

Back home, my 11-year player had an idea. "Let's cook something."

"Something" turned into an organic vegetable soup. We picked a few tomatoes, green onions, sweet basil leaves, and other plants, cooked them in a cream base with potatoes, carrots, garlic, and other ingredients into such a delicious comfort food that even my big, tall meat-eating boys snapped up their portions happily.

What is endlessly wonderful about parenting, as long as you're open to it, is all the things your kids teach you and introduce you to. I could write volumes about this topic. (I suppose, given all of my posts, I already have done that, actually.)

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Back to Origins

2009-11-06T20:46:00.001-08:00

Over three and a half years ago, I started this blog with a simple post:

Date: Tuesday, April 04, 2006
Headline: Heavy rains

Post: Here in the Bay Area, just back from New York, I miss the sunshine, as it has been raining ever since my return. The whole world around me seems to have turned dark. The light is gone.

***

For apparently the first time since I wrote those simple three sentences, I went back to reread them tonight, because I find myself, emotionally, at what feels like the exact same place in life as I was then, with all that old familiar pain.

But before getting to that, I was shocked to discover that in such a short post I could have failed to capitalize the first letter of the first word in the middle sentence!

I've corrected it above, as well as in the original, but it certainly shows that I got off on an inauspicious note, eh?

Of course, hardly anyone ever read that beginning entry, I'm sure.

And I was not at all explicit as to what was happening to me back then. It took awhile before I stopped relying on metaphors like rain and darkness and admitted that I was going through an extremely painful breakup with someone I loved and who loved me.

If I have grown at all since then, I have learned that breakups always involve people who love each other. Even in the white heat of seeming hate, revenge, anger, bitterness, there is the residual love that once ignited softer passions.

This week, the skies have again turned dark, the rains are falling (softly so far) and the same metaphors apply in my personal life. I have returned over the past few months, but explicitly and with finality only this week to the status of a single man, with no partner, mourning an extremely special relationship that just did not work out.

The reasons it didn't work, and the proximate behaviors involved, on her part and mine, will remain private. I've developed a new sensitivity toward all of our collective and individual privacy online over my years of writing here.

On the one hand, I want to be entirely honest, emotionally. And, as a writer, the more of any truth I can voice helps me heal the fastest. But, "truth" is a funny concept, as I've gradually come to appreciate over a lifetime of seeking it.

When a couple splits, there is (at least) her truth and his truth. And since mine is the only voice here, the least fair thing I could possibly do is reflect only my perspective.

I will not do that, not to someone I will always, on many levels, love so deeply, regardless of what the future holds.

Letting someone go is hard work. You have to do it when you lose a relationship; even more profoundly when someone you love dies.

Letting go of anyone seems to be especially hard for me. I still mourn work friendships that date back decades. I miss old friends who have somehow dropped away over the years.

I miss moments that can never return.

Most of all, I miss intimacy, probably the hardest state to achieve. Relationships involve a balance of power. It is almost impossible to get that part right. They also involve stages of life; the two have to have some way to balance their relative stages in a mutually satisfying way if they are to happily stay together.

Of course, I should define my idea of relationship. I don't mean "staying together for the kids;" or "one takes care of the other," or "it would be too scary to end up alone."

I fully accept and even expect that I will end up alone in my life. I've had my share of wonderful relationships, and I can honestly say I wish no one who has been an intimate partner harm. I wish each of them happiness and resolution before we pass on, as each and every one of us will do.

One of my ex's has a great boyfriend. I am very happy for her, she deserves that.

I have a lot of work to do. I wish it wasn't this dreariest of all times of year in which to do it. Every joyful face, with the exception of own children's, at the American holiday time sears my broken heart.

There's more. Deep within any person going through the loss of a relationship that once seemed so special and so hopeful is an awful gaping hole -- a place filled with so much agony that no other human being could possibly be expected to go there and witness it.

Perhaps, with people who write to survive, that place is even uglier and more frightening. Perhaps. I do not know for sure, but what empirical evidence lies before me, in the broken shards of my attempts to form new couplings, suggests that the bright red blood flowing (metaphorically) from my body flows for a reason, and these words must be its purpose.

So, if any of my long-time readers thought they would be rid of me in this space anytime soon, fear not.

A new wound has opened. I am alone, hurting, and needing to communicate. Because that is my only tool for healing and moving on. Those who become too sad at reading about another's pain may wish to vacate these premises for a while.

Take heart. Another season beckons. Spring time, the season of renewal.

But not for now.

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Stopping by the Roadside on a Cloudy Afternoon

2009-11-05T17:07:00.001-08:00

Weather like this always feels portentious. The air is fairly still, but the sky is filling with angry clouds. An hour north of the city, way up at the summit traversed by Lucas Valley Road, you come to Big Rock.

This stretch of Northern California has an other-worldly feel, which is not surprising given that the Star Wars movies draw heavily from this environment for their depictions.

In fact, just a hop, skip and a jump at far less than hyperspeed from Big Rock is Lucas's headquarters.

Though I think of myself, primarily, as a writer, a major way I process information of all types is through visual stimulation. Colors, angles, shadows, visual patterns of all sorts unleash my words. My continuous goal is to try and provoke visual images inside the heads of others with these words.

On the visual side of my career, I've published photos offline, as well as here and on my companion blogs, especially Sidewalk Images.

But I think if I could be reborn as another type of time traveler, it would be as a painter.

Since that seems not likely to happen, let me tell you about the tours of not only Big Rock Ranch, but of Skywalker Ranch, which is a bit further down the road, that I was so kindly given today.

The 1890s Victorian mansion Lucas has had constructed as his home and office is one of the most impressive private buildings in California today. It is massive, but elegantly constructed with astounding portions of stained glass, in-laid wood, and curving walls. Every window looks out onto a separate vista: Only of the natural world; none of the other buildings on the Ranch can be so much as glimpsed.

Much of the artwork knocks you out, because he has originals, but in order to truly appreciate it, I'm afraid you have to be a big fan of Norman Rockwell. There is a heavy air of nostalgia for bygone eras in this place, which is very, very quiet.

You almost need to whisper.

I was reminded of another enormously influential figure: William Randolph Hearst. We Californians deliver such people to the world at large, even as we claim them as our own, identify with them on all sorts of levels, and expect them to be just like us.

Which of course, once they reach this level, they cannot possibly be.

There were many other impressive parts of the tour, including his world-class sound studio, his vineyard, the Inn, the organic gardens, and the herd of cattle. Most of the food in the cafes appears to be harvested onsite.

Let's return to the vineyard. Did you know that the grapes harvested here are bottled by Frances Ford Coppolla into his wildly popular line of wines? I didn't.

It makes sense, given that Lucas and Coppolla, as members of the small club of true non-Hollywood success stories in American film, have long been good friends.

(I've met both men over my life here, just in passing, but that is another story.)

My favorite part of the Lucas mansion is its two-story library, with a winding staircase in the center of the room, a fireplace, and a very large collection of books about mythology (Joseph Campbell, etc.)

The Star Wars stories are deeply ensconced in myths, of course, occasionally painfully so. But it is hard to fault an artist like Lucas who, in an age when fewer people study the classics -- or even read books! -- has devoted his life's work to updating and re-interpreting Oedipus particularly, but many other mythic characters so successfully, using modern technology and communication channels.

I'm a fan for that reason. George Lucas, in my eyes, is one of our great educators in the modern age. He's done what great teachers have tried to do for generations, by bringing our collective intellectual past into the classroom, making it all newly accessible, trying to seduce each successive generation of kids to locate the context for their pains, their trials, their successes, their failures, their dreams and aspirations.

We all go through all of this; none of us escapes any of it. That is a universal lesson. Today's visit, just at a particularly vulnerable time in my own life, was reminder of these essential truths.

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