Tuesday November 30, 2004 – Remembering Things Past

Tuesday November 30, 2004 – Remembering Things Past

It’s my birthday today and I ran early this morning with a renewed resolve. I’m convinced that the secret to a long life is to believe you are capable of it and to live as if you are the young self you keep seeing when you look into the mirror. I’m constantly amazed at how old I appear in photographs and how young I am when I see my reflection in the mirror. I attribute the photograph’s misrepresentation of me to the camera’s natural tendency to exaggerate weight and age. It has something to do with the lens’ inability to capture accurately its subject.

I was born in the fall and this time of year has always been good to me. We moved to California in the fall. I landed my first job as an editor in the fall and the following fall I landed a job at Regis McKenna Advertising and Public Relations. It would last just over a year before I would resume my career in publishing. The agency took up all the office space in a complex at the southwest corner of Lytton Avenue and Waverly Street. Across Lytton was a bar that served incredible hamburgers. We had a lot ordered in for lunch.

That year was the most exciting of my life. I was the public relations account executive for Intel and a little-known start-up back then called Apple Computer. In the late 1970s, Apple consisted largely of Mike Markkula, the man who invested his own money in the company and the two founders, Jobs and Wozniak. They had begun to hire by the time the agency took them on as a client. Mike Scott was president of the company. Scott was from National Semiconductor as was his sales VP, Gene Carter. There was also another National guy, Phil Roybal (spelling may not be completely right) who was my marketing contact at the company.

That first year was one of incredible change. The PC, then called a “home computer” to distinguish it from the hobby kits that had been selling up until then, consisted of three major players: Commodore with its all-in-one PET, and Radio Shack with the TRS-80. The Apple and PET were both based on the 6502 processor, which was developed by Chuck Peddle—I think while he was with MOS Technology (my facts may not be completely straight on this). The “trash 80,” which the Radio Shack machine was affectionately called, ran the 8080 processor.

Right after we got the Apple business, Regis got another account, a company building a PC called “VideoBrain.” It was backed by Hong Kong investors and was being positioned as a computer that anyone could use, not just the hobbyist nerds using the PET, Apple II, and Trash 80. VideoBrain had the idea of selling their machine in department stores and Macy’s that year took the brand on. But the VideoBrain was not very smart and it failed right out of the blocks.

The year the VideoBrain came out was the first year of Comdex in Las Vegas. Apple was there as was VideoBrain. Regis came along to ensure that his two clients were getting properly served. Steve Jobs did well at the gambling table as I recall, up over $1000 at one point. He was certainly a lucky fellow. There is a picture of most of the Apple execs I mentioned earlier having dinner at a restaurant in the MGM Grand Hotel. Mike Markkula’s wife and two other agency people and I were the hangers-on. It was a great meal as I remember. I can’t remember whose idea the photo was, but I ended up with one of the prints.

Regis was well connected in New York and Ben Rosen, then an investment banker at Morgan Stanley was a regular visitor to California. He published the Rosen Newsletter, which was based on interviews with the movers and shakers of Silicon Valley. Apple had a gift program going back then where they would “loan” an Apple II to an editor to evaluate. Rosen got one of the first in the program.

The agency had some great characters back then: Jack Ramsey and Bill Delaney were two of the ad account execs. Rene White, Nariman Karanjia and I were the PR account execs. Chip Shafer—the art director—and a great group on the art department, Zenna, Rob, and a couple of others I’m forgetting. Roberta was Regis’s assistant until she transferred into PR and Gail took her job. Gloria was the office mistress. Rhoda London kept us organized.

Rhoda had some contacts with Magnum or Black Star, one of the photo services, that had been contacted by the French magazine Paris Match, to shoots some pictures of the Apple II computer being used in the home. Rhoda arranged for my two daughters to pose playing games in her living room in Palo Alto. There were other shots of Rhoda in the kitchen organizing her recipes or some such. When the story finally appeared, the magazine had used all the poses except for the one of Rhoda in the kitchen. They had used the picture but had somehow placed another woman’s head on Rhoda’s body. Apparently, the magazine wanted a blonde instead of a brunette. Rhoda was not amused.

There was a real concern around the agency about “who was buying these machines?” No one had a clue beyond the obvious—the hobbyist who had been buying machines all along. They were simply people who wanted to work with computers and somehow find a way to make a living doing it.

After my year doing PR, I was growing weary of the job and I wanted back in publishing. Now, these many years later, I like to look back on where I’ve been and remember some of the folks that were part of my life then. It’s something that seems to go naturally with a birthday.

Monday – November 29, 2004 – Vices of Age

Monday – November 29, 2004 – Vices of Age

I celebrated my 59th birthday today but the actual date is still a couple of days away—yep a Sagittarian. On the bright side, we're optimistic and freedom loving, jovial and good-humored, honest and straightforward, and intellectual and philosophical. On the dark side we’re blindly optimistic and careless, irresponsible and superficial, and tactless and restless. That’s what the astrological definition says at least.

It was a wonderful birthday party at my older daughter M’s house. Nothing compares to being among your children and grandchildren to make you feel alive and worthwhile. We had a small fudge-frosted chocolate cake, which for the first time ever—I think—both my grandchildren ate with abandon. My daughters and I are both chocolate addicts. My wife “I” can take it or leave it. G, M’s husband is of the same mind as “I”. And up to now our grandchildren seem to be in the take-or-leave it camp. But if tonight is any indication, we may have two more chocoholics among us.

However, we did provide a temptation that would be hard for even those among us who are not addicted to chocolate to resist. The cake was from the Prolific Oven, which for my money makes the best fudge-frosted chocolate cake in the Bay Area. The Prolific Oven has been around for at least 20 years and we’ve celebrated many a birthday with one of their cakes.

During high school our younger daughter R had a job at a place called Cocolat. During the time R worked there, we had many wonderful chocolate truffles from the store. It was a pity that the place had to close down. At this time of year, we enjoyed Cocolat’s Bouche de Noel immensely and have not found one of its equal since.

Chocolate is one of the three vices I still permit myself. I gave up smoking right before our oldest daughter M was born. I had started when I was 16 believing that it was an integral part of being a man. I gave it up just after turning 21 when it became obvious, to me at least, that the habit was crippling my lung capacity. Curiously, my dad, who started smoking when he was 18 after joining the Army, gave it up when he was in his fifties—cold turkey after thirty years. The man has incredible will power.

My other two vices are wine, particularly sparkling wine—champagne on special occasions—and coffee. I like to grind my own beans and I’m always on the lookout for new coffee suppliers. In the Bay Area, Peet’s is a great source of interesting choices. In Southern California, Diedrich’s provides a great selection, but it’s the roasting where their coffee shines. In Seattle, the coffee I’m currently hooked on is Vivace.

The reason I bring up my vices is that they were the presents that I received this birthday: four selections of Vivace coffee, from M, and an assortment of Dana Point, California-based Bodega chocolates from R. My wife “I” treated us to the Prolific Oven cake. As for the sparkling wine, I bought myself a case of Piper Sonoma Brut at Pier 1—what a deal at $9.85 a bottle.

I figured that since this is my last year before turning 60, I might as well indulge the vices I can still enjoy to the hilt.

Sunday – November 28, 2004 – Salvation in Conspicuous Consumption?

Sunday – November 28, 2004 – Salvation in Conspicuous Consumption?

I noticed a large blow-up Santa and Frosty the Snowman outside a church along my run the other day but it was up no more than a day or two before it was removed. I suspect someone in the congregation pointed out that the church above all should know what Christmas really means. The church normally has a nativity scene on display and I expect one will appear before the season is completely over. However, if the religious fundamentalists really think about the meaning of Christmas, Santa and Frosty—representatives of the commercial side of the holiday—have a great deal more to do with it than most people in this country and now all over the world realize. The celebration of Christ’s birth is also a celebration of what the religions, his teaching engendered, have driven their religious practitioners toward: a demonstration of each individual’s personal salvation as exemplified in their personal net worth.

When you’re a kid trying to understand what the world is all about, the last thing you think about is work. The acquisition of wealth is likewise a foreign concept. I’m making a general statement and I’m sure there are those parents that begin teaching their children at an early age the importance of acquiring wealth and they grow up becoming captains of industry with tons of money. But, the vast majority of us learned about money through an allowance—my family was too poor to afford such a luxury so I learned about money through a paper route.

My paper route experience taught me a great deal about money. Unlike the exceptional kid that viewed the amount of money he made as the score in a game he’s playing, I saw money as a means to an end, buying stuff for the Vespa scooter I had purchased on credit from my parents to deliver my papers, 45-RPM records that I had to have, cool clothes to wear to school. As I grew older, money became the necessity for providing for my family. My first job after getting married paid just enough to cover the rent and buy groceries. I took a second job to provide the spending money we needed to pay for our newborn daughter. Throughout our early years as a family, money was for keeping the household going. Salary increases were simply a way to keep up with the increases in cost year to year.

As our kids got older I began to see money as a measure of your worth within the pool of labor all vying for work. The more you can command in salary, the more valuable you are relative to others in the labor market, and the more you can demonstrate your wealth in the house, car, clothes, and other possessions you can acquire. But why is it we need to excel over others in terms of personal wealth?

I don’t know about you but I have no idea of why I’ve been born on this planet, in this solar system, in this universe. I know the obvious that my parents made the decision to have me, but why are we born—what is the purpose of humans on the face of this planet. We’re like Robinson Crusoe and his man Friday, stranded on an island—ours happens to be a good size island with plenty of water and food that we have to work to acquire and provide for our family and ourselves. But, after we’ve worked to provide our basic needs, food, shelter, clothing, the elements you need to make it through each day, why do we strive to acquire a surplus of purchasing power? Crusoe knew that there was a world beyond his island and his longing was to return to that world. We’re not as lucky. All we know is that we emerged into consciousness within a family group, with no recollection of how we got here other than the stories your parents told you of your birth. What light does the accumulation of wealth shed on this mystery?

One answer lies in the idea that somewhere there is a power greater than humankind that is somehow aware of what we’re doing. The Greeks had their gods on Olympus, and every civilization throughout time have sought solace in the thought of some supreme being. In a material culture such as Western Civilization since probably before the Greeks, people who acquire wealth are somehow blessed. Out of millions of people picking lottery numbers, the person who selects the winning lottery ticket number is unique. That person(s) had an insight that all those other aspiring players did not. The same is true for the person who starts a company and it takes off and makes lots of money. Fate or some force allowed him to prosper where others fail. There are others who are blessed with special talents who likewise exploit that talent to acquire wealth, but once again, the stars aligned and provided that person with the gift while his peers were excluded. Somehow, the hand of a supreme deity looks kindly on successful people. The only way to know if you’re one of the select few is to work diligently to amass more wealth than those around you, for surely that will be a sign that you have been chosen.

In a world where you have no idea of why you’re here, amassing wealth certainly goes a long way to providing some sense of purpose. Thus, it is appropriate that we celebrate the symbols of materialism alongside the religious symbols. Whether or not we like it, both have exerted enormous influence over our lives.

Saturday November 27, 2004 – Ft Buchanan 1956

Saturday November 27, 2004 – Ft Buchanan 1956

The year my family and I spent in Camp Losey on the southwestern coast of Puerto Rico went faster than I could have imagined when we first arrived in the summer of 1955. The base had become familiar to me and I had made friends and had gotten into a comfortable daily routine of school, play, dinner, homework and television viewing on our black and white Dumont cabinet TV. There was only one English language station to watch and it provided a selection of various shows airing on the two major networks back then, NBC and CBS. Two that come to mind are I Love Lucy and The Honeymooners. Then there were the news program See it Now, with Edward R. Murrow, and the evening news broadcasts: NBC News with John Cameron Swayze and CBS News with Douglas Edwards. We were living an idyllic suburban 1950s existence in a completely realized enclave of America in Puerto Rico.

That came to an end in the summer of 1956 when my dad was transferred to Ft Buchanan near San Juan on the northeastern coast of Puerto Rico. The base was much larger than Camp Losey and had many more amenities, a much larger movie theater with a regular size screen though now we had to pay. Still, seeing the Three Stooges on the big screen was a better experience. Another movie I remember from that time was Ransom about a kidnapping that traumatized me so that I still remember it. The base had an expansive park with a large reception hall for holding parties, and an Olympic-sized swimming pool, where I learned to swim. The base also had plenty of wooded areas that my friends and I spent our free time exploring. We were emboldened because we’d learned the island had no snakes due to the mongoose that had been brought in to rid the island of the species.

We were once again housed in the rows of two-story cinderblock townhouse rows similar to the ones we had down south. The houses up north had no back yard but did have a lawn in the front between our front door and the street above. Behind our street of houses was a large concrete spillway for carrying rainwater runoff just beyond the paved alley that provided access for the parking space in the back of our house for the 1951 Olds. The spillway was about ten feet below ground level and twelve to fifteen feet across. A bridge over the spillway provided a pedestrian walkway to access the Post Exchange (PX)—the equivalent of a large department store off base. The PX carried dry goods, small appliances, and clothing, just about everything except groceries. We got those from the nearby post Commissary, the equivalent of supermarket that were cropping up stateside in the 50s. Besides the PX there was a canteen—a self-serve café that sold breakfast, lunch, and dinner to solders and dependents. Outside the café, military buses transporting soldiers and dependents about the island picked up and dropped off passengers.

The base had a large well-stocked library and this became as important to me as the base movie theater. It was at the library that I became hooked on The Hardy Boys series of books. My interest in reading was engendered by a tradition that valued reading, not only in school but outside as well. Many of my classmates were avid readers, though I can’t remember us discussing what we read. It was something we enjoyed when we were alone and we weren’t playing together or going to the movies, which we did discuss at length. The stairway in our house had a closet underneath and I would love to go inside close the door and read by the light of the bare 60 watt bulb that illuminated the small space. One book that I still remember reading was a biography of David Glasgow Farragut, the nation’s first Admiral of the Navy. I was struck by the life of a young boy in the 1800s, whose family gave him up to be adopted by a Naval family at a young age to learn the art of seamanship. The biography of Babe Ruth was another book that engaged me.

I joined the base little league team, probably accounting for my reading about the Babe, and we played teams from other military bases over the island. We had uniforms that I thought was just like the major leagues. I recall that in my first tryout, I had terrible difficulty hitting and my throws were wild. I managed to get control of my throwing and eventually found myself in the shortstop position playing most games. I was quick and instinctive grasped how to play a ball hit between second and third base. The second baseman and I were whiz kids when it came to the double play and we made a lot of them. However, it took everything I had to step into the batter’s box and face a pitcher. I was terrible at bat with an average somewhere around 150.

Little league taught me a great deal about the world I would one day become part of. We were in a heated contest for first place among the island teams. The coach and a few of the parents of the kids on the team really wanted to win this one particular game at the end of the season. There was this big kid—he towered over all us small guys, who was playing in the pony league but was still young enough to play little league. They suited him up in one of our uniforms and he took the plate for us. The result was predictable. The kid slammed a hit every time he came to the plate ensuring we won the game. The kids on the team all knew we hadn’t won it fair and square and though we celebrated, we knew it wasn’t completely our victory, but that of a ringer bought in to give us the unfair advantage.

My one fond memory of little league was watching a game between the 1956 U.S. little league team from New York who had traveled to the island to play the local Puerto Rican little league champions. The baseball field on base where the game was to be played had extra bleachers set up to accommodate the expected crowd. We were all expecting the stateside champs to have an easy victory over the local team, but we were surprised at how well the Puerto Ricans played. You could tell that these local guys had much more at stake in winning the game than their opponents. Though the first part of the game had both teams scoring evenly, the later part belonged to the locals, who hit more consistently and kept the stateside little league champs from scoring. At the end of the game, both teams showed great sportsmanship shaking each other’s hands and congratulating one another on a well-played game. It kind of compensated for the feeling I had at the end of our last game.

There was a Catholic Church on base and I would go not only to mass every Sunday, but also to catechism classes on Saturday. There, I had an adult male teacher that the class was encouraged to address by his first name. During the time I attended classes I was being taught the seven sacraments all Catholics received during their lifetime: baptism, communion, marriage and last rites. I’m forgetting a couple but those were the biggies. I was pretty dutiful about going to confession and communion. Religion seemed to provide something that was missing in my life back then. For one thing, it kept at bay those private demons that would visit bad dreams to me at night.

My other fond memory of 1956 was my mother’s quest to become a U.S. citizen. In hindsight, it was quite ironic that my mother acquired her citizenship not in the U.S. but rather in a U.S. possession, not unlike her own, The Philippines. She studied all the course materials to prepare for the examination that would occur at the end of the process. She was required to learn some U.S. history as well as understand the way the U.S. government functions. My dad and us kids helped as best we could. My mother was pretty well read on U.S. history and government as she learned it in school in The Philippines. However, details such as the Electoral College system, how a bill gets passed in Congress, what the function of the various courts were—state and federal, the different appeals courts, and the Supreme Court. We were all really anxious for her, but in November 1956, she was granted her citizenship by the U.S. District Court of Puerto Rico. It was her proudest moment.

Friday November 26, 2004 – Camp Losey 1955 to 1956

Friday November 26, 2004 – Camp Losey 1955 to 1956

The year my family and I spent at Camp Losey on the southern coast of Puerto Rico was my first ever spent within the world of a military base. When we arrived on the base, our family belongings from El Paso finally arrived after six weeks in transit. Our house on base was a row of four white two-story cinder block townhouses. Each row of four had an ample front yard and a large back yard with no fences. We had an end unit so we had plenty of room to run around after school and on weekends. Our row was on a cul-de-sac with several townhouse rows lining the street on either side. A main thoroughfare gave access to the line of cul-de-sac’ed townhouse rows. I can’t remember how long the main road was nor the number of culs-de-sacs, but across from the townhouses was an expansive golf course. Golf was that popular on the base that on weekends, there were classes that taught kids the sport. It was the year in which my memories are most vivid.

My sisters and I were enrolled in Camp Losey Elementary School on the base. I was entering the 5th grade and my teacher was Mrs. Etchison who taught a classroom containing 4th, 5th, and 6th grades. Mrs. Etchison had a son, who resembled the Nobel Laureate William B. Shockley, one of the inventors of the transistor. If you can picture Shockley as a 5th grade student, Mrs. Etchison’s son not only resembled Shockley in looks but also his stoic demeanor and seeming lack of emotion. I can’t remember the kid’s name but after my first conversation with him and the aftermath of that conversation, I hated his guts. As soon as I arrived at school, he approached me and asked if I would like to box at recess. Trying to fit in I agreed only to find that he was a master pugilist and I was a complete neophyte and he spent the better part of a minute or two pummeling me with the oversized gloves the physical education teacher had put on each of us. I remember falling to the ground to the chants and cheers of all the kids in school. After my thrashing, he never paid me further attention, establishing his dominant role over me. Curiously, I never held any resentment to Mrs. Etchison, who should have reined in her attack dog but chose to let “boys be boys.”

Once the fight was over, I had some how been made part of the student body. I played a decent game of marbles and managed to maintain a sock full of other kids’ marbles that would increase and decrease in size depending on my aim on any given day. Those were the games we played during lunch period. During recess, the games were more supervised and included dodge ball where your classmates try to bash you with a red rubber ball slightly smaller and lighter in weight than a basketball. If you got hit with the ball it would rouge the impacted skin. Other games we played include red-rover, red-rover, though for the life of me I can’t remember how it was played. We also ran relay races in mixed groups of boys and girls. Winner got bragging rights. The kids in school were mostly white with a sprinkling of Hispanics and mixed Asian American, me included—if you lump The Philippines into the Asia. There was one Jewish kid that I only remember because at Christmas that year, everyone asked him what he and his family did if they didn’t celebrate Christmas. There was an audience of a half dozen kids sitting on the steps leading into the classrooms listening to his answer.

I did pretty well academically in school. My report card for that year showed mostly B’s with nothing lower than C’s, one in Social Studies and a second in Health. My conduct was shown as a consistent B-, mostly for talking in class when I wasn’t supposed to. The grades were comparable to those of my 4th grade year at Travis Elementary School in El Paso. I was beginning to establish my lifelong interest in reading. I remember one particular story I read during that year that has continued to stick in my head. The main character of the story was a young boy living in Hawaii, who was an accomplished surfer. The story described how the boy would paddle out into the oncoming waves, mount his board, catch a wave and ride it back into the shore. For the life of me I could not conjure in my mind what the boy was doing and I must have read the story many times over trying to “get it” to no avail. It was some time later watching something on television showing surfers in Hawaii that it finally dawn on me what was happening.

My other memories of that school year were three brothers, one each in the three grades of Mrs. Etchison’s class. All three were heavy, large framed boys, who had the build for linemen on a football team. Curiously, they were easy going and all three had the habit of sucking their thumb, a habit their parents never felt was worth breaking them of. I enjoyed their flaunting convention and “doing their own thing,” though no one in their right mind would have made fun of their practice at the risk of getting the big guys mad. Still it was a curious sight. Perhaps it was their way of coping with the trauma of transient military life. The kids in school had seen more of the world than most U.S. civilians. Ask them where they were before and all would give different army bases in Europe and the U.S.

The kids in school were a close-knit group since the base was relatively small and we were allowed to walk about alone, knowing where we were allowed to go and where we had to keep out. Every Saturday morning, the base theatre—a darkened room with a projector and pull-up movie screen in a recreation room set aside for kids in a building near the school—would run free movies for several hours. I remember seeing the entire Flash Gordon serial as well as most of the Three Stooges shorts. Also shown were the movies of the great comic actors of the time: Buster Keaton, Abbott and Costello, to name a few. Then there were the western, Hopalong Cassiday, Gene Autry, Tex Ritter, and Roy Rogers and Dale Evans. And there were always plenty of cartoons and Newsreels.

We got around via a regularly scheduled free bus service that had stops all over the base where we would jump on and off throughout the day. When we weren’t going to school or watching movies, we boys would build forts of piled up rocks and have mock wars with one another. There was a large open field on the base that we would explore on the weekends. It was once used for military maneuvers and had plenty of brass shell casings strewn about and God knows what else left over from that time. On one such outing, I had a pocketknife with me and I was trying to cut the branch of a young tree. The knife slipped and I somehow cut myself just right of the index finger knuckle on my right hand. Fearing the worse if my parents found out where I’d been, I bandaged myself and hid the wound as best I could. After two days, my conscience and worry over the cut not healing faster drove me to confess my escapade to my parents. My mom took me to the base infirmary where a medic cleaned the wound, and fixed me up with a butterfly bandage. He said it should have had stitches to prevent scaring but it was already on its way to healing and thought doing stitches now would not provide any benefit.

I remember another time that a wound was treated with first aid and not given medical attention. My dad and three of his friends had decided to drive to Ramey Air Force Base near Aguadilla, a town on the northwest tip of the island sixty miles from the base. My dad drove our 1951 Olds. It was an all day outing and on the return trip, which began in the evening, the four heard several gunshots as they passed a particular stretch of road and heard the back window of the Olds shatter from the impact of a bullet. As the passengers ducked my dad instinctive accelerated to put distance between them and the shooter. When they had driven some distance, one of the passengers in the back seat realized that he was bleeding from his head.

They applied a makeshift bandage held in place by a belt cinched around the injured passenger’s head. This is how he appeared coming into our house on base after the four returned. Removing the bandage and cleaning the wound, they saw that the bullet that had struck the back window had grazed the rear passenger’s head just above the right ear, The wound was not deep and the skull was not punctured, so no one thought the matter should go any further including the injured man. The Olds still had its Texas license plates. At that time, there was a major labor dispute between oil giant Texaco and its Puerto Rican workers. The shot was obviously fired at the car because of its plates and the presumed relationship with the oil company, or so the thinking among the four went. Somehow the next day the back window was replaced and the inside the Olds showed no trace of the previous evenings’ near miss.

We arrived at Camp Losey in 1955 and a year before the Army turned the base over to the Navy. Some of the Army personnel stationed at the camp were reassigned to Army bases throughout the states and overseas. while others, my dad included, were transferred to Ft Buchanan Army Base near San Juan.

Thursday November 25, 2004 – Trip to Puerto Rico Circa 1955

Thursday November 25, 2004 – Trip to Puerto Rico Circa 1955

My father and mother spent most of their early lives together moving from one military base to another. I remember our first big move, which happened in the summer of 1955. The Army had transferred my dad from Ft Bliss, next to El Paso, Texas to Camp Losey near the town of Ponce, on the central southern coast of Puerto Rico. I had just completed fourth grade at Travis Elementary School in El Paso—the school is still teaching kids this many years later in the same place, between Lincoln and Hayes Avenues on North Stevens Street. Our furniture and household belongings were loaded up in a moving van for the journey overland to New York and from there to Puerto Rico. We would arrive well ahead of it.

My parents, my three younger sisters and I were loaded into my dad’s 1951 Oldsmobile—sans seat belts and we began the trip east, stopping briefly at my grandmother’s place in Brooklyn, where we spent a couple of days with Aunt Letha, who died mysteriously in 1972 just shy of her 100th birthday—her gravestone shows a birth date of September 1879, though her true age she kept secret. In 1955, she was 74 years old but she had the will and physical stamina of a woman half her age. She had her own place nearby grandma’s house but she would inhabit both places as the mood struck her.

Though Aunt Letha had kin in and around Brooklyn she lived alone except for her dog and a few farm animals. She was my father’s only remaining relative on his mother’s side. And he had a loving fondness for her, as did my mother, who had come to love and admire this noble woman, with eyes that fixed you in her gaze and a verbal patter that had a chant-like quality. I remember her cooking for us and being mistress of the manor when we came to visit. I’m sure she loved the company of so many people in the house after being alone in the intervals between our visits. Our family tradition was to spend Christmas in Mississippi and she looked forward to our arrival.

From Mississippi, we drove on to New York where we were to board a Military Sea Transport Ship that would take us to Puerto Rico from the Brooklyn Naval Yard. We were not well off and my father had banked on having accommodations at the guesthouse at the Army receiving station at the shipyard. When we arrived there were no vacancies until the following day so we had to fend for ourselves in the big city for the night. Most of the hotels where the Army suggested we stay were well out of our modest budget, so we found a place on Staten Island to camp out in the Oldsmobile overnight. The following day we checked into the Army guesthouse.

A couple of days later we boarded the military transport and began our journey to Puerto Rico, which took a couple of days. On board the ship were many other military families all making the trip, some going to Camp Losey and others to Ft Buchanan on the northern coast of the island near San Juan. Military kids make friends fast, realizing that you may or may not see one another again. Being around kids your age going through the same sense of displacement you were experiencing tended to ease the strain, especially when they seemed to be having the time of their lives and you were feeling miserable. There was this lovely blond girl about my age whom I became very attached to during the trip and I was heartbroken when we had to go our separate ways at the end of the voyage.

When we arrived in Puerto Rico, I remember a long bus ride across the island from San Juan to Ponce. It was a slow trip that meandered through forested areas lush with vegetation and mountainous stretches that seemed to take forever to traverse. When we arrived, my father found a hotel in Ponce that was in our price range—how they managed to pay for the cost of providing room and board for us is a mystery to me. I suspect the Army provided us with a cash allowance to pay for travel expenses. My father and mother have a way of befriending people and we were soon very familiar with the hotel’s owner and his family. They spoke enough English and my mother spoke enough Spanish that we were able to get along quite well. My dad would report to the base during the day and we were left to play in the hotel room and the lobby area. The hotel was above a print shop and my sisters and I would watch the workings of the shop as a pastime.

It took a week or so for us to find a house that my father rented in a suburb of Ponce. It was adjacent to an enormous sugarcane field. Our Oldsmobile had finally caught up to us and my father drove us to our new home, sans furniture, as it had not caught up to us yet. We had been living out of suitcases for several weeks with my mother somehow managing to keep us in clean clothes. We had arrived in the latter part of the summer and my sisters and I were left with time on our hands and a new place to explore. My sisters and I got to know the neighbor kids and we had quite a few adventures learning about life in a land where English was the second language. The cane field provided an endless playground as well as a source of crawfish, which older neighborhood kids would catch in nets in the irrigation pipes that watered the crop.

Each day, there would be a vendor selling fresh baked loaves of bread, one of my favorite memories of that time. Buttered bread and warm milk mixed with coffee along with cereal and we were ready for the day. There was a grocery store a few blocks from where we lived where I would go for milk and eggs and other staples. My mother did most of her grocery shopping on Camp Losey where the prices were much lower and the selection larger.

By the time the school year began, we eventually got housing on Camp Losey and were once again living among an English speaking community. The change was like night and day. The neighborhood in Ponce was uniquely Puerto Rican. The base was any small town community in 1955 America.

Wednesday November 24, 2004 – American Gothic

Wednesday November 24, 2004 – American Gothic

We have this picture of my mom and dad taken over ten years ago when my youngest daughter R was graduating high school. They had driven up to attend the graduation in their 1970 vintage Lincoln Continental hauling an Airstream trailer that has been all the way to Alaska and back, not to mention on countless trips between El Paso, Texas and Brooklyn, Mississippi, where my grandmother’s home was until it burned to the ground over twenty years ago.

In the picture my mom and dad are standing side by side. My dad has on a light colored western shirt with the collar button and a bola necktie around his neck. He’s looking directly at the camera. Standing beside him is my diminutive Filipina mother, her head barely topping his shoulder also looking directly at the camera. Both have serious looks on their faces, though my father has the slightest hint of a smile, mostly seen in his sparkling blue eyes. My mother’s expression is that of the Sphinx, mysterious and enigmatic yet wise—though it can be piercing when she turns her gaze on you.

Every time I look at the picture, I’m reminded of Grant Wood's painting "American Gothic" though the painting depicts an Iowa farmer and his daughter. I think the reason the picture of my mom and dad conjures up the painting is the pose, man and woman side by side. In Wood’s work you can see that the two people captured on canvas are related. In the photo of my mom and dad, you see the resemblance that comes from two people being together for so long a period of time, close to forty years when that picture was taken. In their younger life, my mom took care of my dad. In their later years, it is my dad who has taken on the role of caregiver. Life has a way of evening out the load just as in my parents’ picture the two appear to share similar features.

Looking at the photograph, you can see in my father the prototype of the American man. He’s tall, an inch or two shy of six feet. He is slender and sinewy with arms and neck, tanned copper from a lifetime of working in the sun—a mechanic most of his life in the military and afterwards in civilian life, repairing diesel and gasoline engines. In the photo, he has graying and thinning, light brown hair, which still covers most of his head but cut military style—a 20-year tour, most as a sergeant in the Army, leaves habits that follow you through life. His hairline is receding though it remains forward enough to keep his high forehead from suggesting a growing baldness. His Aryan face—his father was a full-blooded, right off-the boat German, shows the first sign of age in ever so slightly drooping cheeks and chin. He has a well shaped, rounded classic Cro Magnum head, ears close to his skull, and a Germanic nose, situated in the middle of a square face that curves down and inward to form a rounded chin.

My petite Filipina mother, who I resemble far more than my father with our full lips, slightly flatten nose, brown eyes, and brown skin, nevertheless, inexplicably bears features that resemble those of my father. Perhaps it’s the way each holds their heads or their posture, or the expression on their faces. Whatever it is, I’m struck by it when I look at that photograph. My mother is from the outskirts of Manila in a little town called Agoo La Union and was a strikingly beautiful young woman with her long black hair and her engaging smile. I can easily see how my father was smitten with her. However, beneath that beautiful exterior is a willful woman, who I believe is far more courageous and brave than many men. She’s demonstrated that character on at least two occasions that I can remember and I’ve been in awe of her ever since. She taught me what I know about taking risks.

My father met my mother during the last days of the Second World War while he was on duty in The Philippines. The Army was still engaging entrenched Japanese resistance still in the islands. They began living together shortly after they met and my father became close to my mother’s large extended family of brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles—her parents had both died by then. How my mother and I came to this country is another story, but we did in the last half of the 1940s a couple of years after I was born. My mother must have felt right at home in Mississippi, Georgia and North Carolina, the states my father took her through in the first few years of their marriage. All three were hot and humid in the summer and seldom saw terrible cold winters—a pretty good description of The Philippines or so my mother tells me.

What is captured in that photo of my parents which is hinted at but not seen is the lifetime of struggle the two of them went through to get to that point in time. The serenity and bliss that emanates from their frozen pose had been forged by years of struggle: the pawnshop providing a lender of last resort in cash strapped times—in the absence of credit cards that are ubiquitous today, picking up and moving every three years at the whim of the Army, cross country trips in a 1953 Oldsmobile without air conditioning in the summer… My parents lived by their wits: my mother managing the household and caring for four children, my father making sure that there were meals on the table, a roof over our heads, and clothes on our back.

What that photo does imply is a bond that has been forged by those decades of living together, arguing, making up, coping with the thousands of small heartbreaks that fill any life. You see in that picture two people, but if you were to see them in their element back home in El Paso you would see an interconnected community of people that comprise the world of my father and mother. The community resembles an organic being with each contributing their part to the community to make it stronger than any individual within it. By the time that picture was taken, my dad and mom had been away from El Paso for a good week and the stress of being on the road that long living out of a Airstream was beginning to take its toll.

A day after that picture was taken, the two of them hitched up the Airstream and made their way back home. They have been back to visit on more recent occasions, but not in the Airstream. Mostly, we visit them now though my father still harbors the dream of him and my mother hitting the road and going where their whim takes them.

Tuesday November 23, 2004 – The Information Age Exacts a Cost

Tuesday November 23, 2004 – The Information Age Exacts a Cost

When I was born, my first recollections were of a small farm in Brooklyn, Mississippi. I remember going to a school that was next to the church my family would attend on Sunday. I’ve been meaning to write to the Department of Education in Forrest County, where the small town of Brooklyn is, to ask for my school records. I’m willing to bet they don’t have them. The school I attended and the Baptist church across the road, where most of my relatives on my father’s side are buried have long since been abandoned. My record of where they lay to rest have been captured by recorders who locate graveyards and collect and publish the wording on head stones within each. I have such a recording of the cemetery adjacent to St. Johns Baptist Church. Theirs were anonymous lives whose secrets lie buried with them.

In this modern world, the very secrets that rest securely with the departed are increasingly becoming part of a public/private record. And I’m becoming concerned about how much of this information exists on all of us today. You could argue that the collected information on each of us enables the information holders to have a more personal relationship with us. The grocery store clerk can call you by your first name, the barber shop where I go to get a hair cut can ask me if I want the same haircut I had the last time and describe the instructions I gave back then, though the young woman barber attending to me was not the one who cut my hair before. It is rare that I recognize the barber that attends to me when I sit in the barber chair, but each of them know how I’ve cut my hair in the past and probably how often I come into the shop.

The grocery store, with its club card customer loyalty program, knows what I and my wife “I” purchase on a regular basis no matter the store we’re in. I can see the chain’s motives implementing the program; they get to achieve customer loyalty by giving you a discount on certain goods. In return you provide a record to the store of everything you buy and how often you come in. A smart statistical analysis program running on a compute farm in the grocery chain’s main IT (information technology) center can better stock the stores you shop in with goods you most often buy. In fact, the program has the capability equivalent to the one used by the weather service to forecast weather.

Credit card companies have similar programs that examine your historical purchasing patterns and make determination about the probability that someone has taken your card and is going on a shopping spree. A case in point occurred at the start of the year. I made my first ever trip to Taiwan in February. I upgraded my economy seat to one with slightly more legroom and used my AMEX card to pay for the transaction at SFO. Once in Taiwan, I charged my hotel stay in Taipei and Hsin Chu on the same card. A month and a half later I returned to Taiwan and charged an amount ten times the maximum I’ve ever charged on the card—it was for a seminar my company held at the Hsin Chu hotel where I had stayed during my previous trip. The charge went through as soon as the hotel entered the card number. I can only assume that the fraud program was well aware of my spending habits and places I had stayed in recent weeks to determine that the rather large charge was not fraudulent. I suspect that AMEX program knows more about what I’ve done over the last 30 years than most of my closest family and friends.

And if the program knows, any human with access to that program who wants to know can get the program to tell it everything. The program is like that friend of yours you’ve sworn to secrecy with the most intimate details of your life and he or she only tells one or two of his or her closest friends. The tens of millions of adults in this country, whether they realize it or not, are now living in a small village where your business is known. Your most intimate secrets are known: the type of birth control devices you purchase, the medications you’re on—this is a far better indicator of your health than even your medical record, the type of movies you watch, the magazines you subscribe to, how much and what kind of alcoholic beverages you consume, and if you have a wireless toll collection transponder, who you’ve called—how often and for how long, where you’ve driven in the local community on any given day of the month—though this does assume you traverse a bridge in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The state of California is now proposing to charge motorists by the mile driven rather than by the amount of gas consumed. More fuel-efficient automobiles are eating into the state’s revenues. The technology is relatively easy to implement. In the crudest form, each motorist would be issued a transponder not unlike the one used to collect tolls and the state would simply install transmitter-receivers at intervals along any major thoroughfare—the freeways first, and at each interchange. Then every month or every quarter, the state would issue a bill based on the amount of miles recorded to your transponder. The great civil liberties problem is that the state could essentially know where every motorist of the state is at any given time: a great tool for law enforcement but hell on people who are engaging in any kind of lawful activity in which they would like to keep their whereabouts private—the merger of two large corporations or an illicit (not illegal) extramarital affair.

I’ve tried to resist all these attempts to collect information on me. When I purchase wine, I pay in cash and I shop where they have no loyalty program that identifies me. I don’t have a wireless toll collection device, though there have been times I would have killed for one. I’ve not filled prescriptions—especially for pain killers—my doctor and dentist have given me—they feel obliged to write a prescription to justify their time with me. However, I’m running out of ways to resist the collective efforts to build an electronic record of my daily activity. I have no doubt that information gleaners will overtake me completely if that hasn’t already occurred.

Monday November 22, 2004 – Trying to Outrun Age

Monday November 22, 2004 – Trying to Outrun Age

Saturday and Sunday mornings are trying when it comes to keeping to a strict regimen of daily running. During the week, the routine is habitual, waking at 5:25 AM, most mornings seconds before the alarm clock goes off, getting out of bed and shutting off the alarm so as not to disturb my wife “I”. Stumbling from bed on legs stiff from six hours of mostly dreamless sleep, though “I” complains that I tend to talk in my sleep after a stressful day; I’m oblivious, however. Down the stairs on bare feet to retrieve my running shorts, white socks, and light gray sweatshirt, which I don in the light of the laundry room just inside our garage.

Once dressed, I proceed out the door to the garage where I shod my feet in trusty ASICS running shoes—they have a shock absorbing gel in their heels that eases the pounding stress on ankle, knee, and hip joints. I’ve tried nearly every brand—Nike, New Balance, Reeboks, Adidas, Saucony… but the ASICS fit better and provide the most comfortable feel over the six miles of my run. Once shoes have been laced, I retrieve the side garage door keys and make my way out into the still darkened dawn and begin at a slow jog down my cul-de-sac toward the main east-west thoroughfare, Branham Lane, near where I live and head west. There are very few cars on the road at this hour in the morning making breathing a great deal easier. For a good 20 years, I ran after returning home from work. At that time in the early evening, the daily accumulation of daylong and evening commute traffic exhaust was heaping insults on my gasping lungs.

My run takes me west on Branham just over two miles, across Snell Avenue—a six-lane, north-south thoroughfare—through Vista Park Drive, then over north-south California Highway 87, and changing directions at Pearl Avenue, where the route turns left and I follow Pearl south until it ends at Chynoweth Avenue. At the intersection of Pearl and Chynoweth is a Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority light rail station. I turn left on Chynoweth and begin the return leg of my run. Along this stretch, Chynoweth ducks under the light rail tracks and California Highway 87 and climbs up passing Gunderson High School. I leave Chynoweth at Hyde Park Drive turning left and making my way east past Vista Park—an open space with playground, baseball, and soccer field. About four blocks later Hyde Park dead-ends at Vista Park Drive. A block left on Vista Park Drive and I’m back on Branham Lane where I turn right passing the Carlton Plaza Assisted Living Center. Ten minutes or so later and I’m done for the morning. It’s 6:30 and I’ve got a half hour to shower, dress, and begin my commute north to Palo Alto and the start of the workday.

On the weekend, I shut the alarm off and usually don’t go to sleep until after midnight on Friday and Saturday. Waking at 9:00 or later on a Saturday or Sunday morning and lacking the momentum that comes from a daily repetitive, ritualistic grind, I have to make a determined effort to get into jogging gear and make my way out into a warm sun lit day and begin my journey. I’m driven by a great fear that the morning I wake and am unable to complete my round, I’ll have admitted to my age and to the certainty that such an admission means. I began my daily sojourn over two decades ago proclaiming that I was running to keep ahead of death. It was a macabre joke when I was in my 30s. Today, it has a ring of truth.

I’ve noticed over the past several years since the turn of the millennium that the time it takes me to complete the trip has increased slightly. Where I could claim a time of 50 minutes to complete the run before, the time has now gotten closer to an hour. I’m sure that the increase can be attributed to my aging physiology, but I’m inclined to believe that some of the increase is the result of a decrease in the drive that propelled me in my younger years. Years earlier, I was a ball of nervous energy unable to settle down, having to be constantly doing something. The idea of sitting still was such an anathema that my wife “I” continually pointed out when we were on vacation that I was substituting a day full of activity for the day full of work I had left behind. Over the years, I suspect that age has had a way of moderating the hormonal floods that assault us all daily.

My one consolation is that I can still make the trip without having to resort to rest stops along the way. Furthermore, I can still work myself into a steady rhythm in which I can ignore the impulses to slow my fast-paced progress to a leisurely walk. When I’m unable to achieve and sustain this state I’ll have to admit then that I’m over the hill. The challenge now is to see how long I can forestall that day.

Saturday November 20, 2004 – Holding Divergent Views Concurrently

Saturday November 20, 2004 – Holding Divergent Views Concurrently

From the time we had discretionary income, Friday evening was the time my wife “I”, our two daughters, and I would go out to dinner. Now that both daughters have families of their own, the two of us keep the tradition alive by going to one of our favorite restaurants around San Jose. In an earlier blog, I mentioned Paolo’s, but last evening our choice was A.P. Stumps on East Santa Clara Street near St. Pedro Square, one of the hubs of nightlife in San Jose.

The restaurant is the place where humans intellectualize the basic act of sustaining themselves with food. The earliest humans by contrast killed their own prey or scavenged meat of more powerful predators. That was the main course. The starters consisted of nuts, berries, and other edible plants that could be gathered. Needless to say, we’ve improved on the process considerably, but the results are the same: meat, poultry, or fish that other humans have killed, butchered, and prepared to our order in conjunction with greens, vegetables, and other edible plants grown, picked, and prepared also to our order.

In the 1950s, the café in Paris had been raised to great heights. Jean-Paul Sartre in Being and Nothingness wrote. “The Café is a fullness of being.” America during the early part of the 20th century had coined the term “café society” to describe the practice of dining and drinking to all hours, with the emphasis more on drinking. At least the French tended toward lower alcohol-content wine, which brings up the question of where did all of this hedonism begin? And the answer lies—as for most all of modern practices—with the Greeks. They were the ones who invented the pleasure of eating and drinking.

In James Davidson’s fine book Courtesans & Fishcakes, he writes. “The most formal context for the consumption of wine in the Greek world was the drinking party or symposium… Eating and drinking… were formally quite separate activities; dinner was concluded, the tables sided, and the floor swept, before the symposium, the liquid part of the meal, could begin.” During this part of the meal, men would sit for hours sipping wine and indulging in the kinds of discourse we were all required to read when assigned Plato in school.

Now, here we are close to 2400 years later doing much the same thing—if a Woody Allen movie is accurate—eating and drinking while indulging in conversations about our lives. My conversation tonight with “I” was about the duality in which we humans live our lives. There is the life we know to exist and the life we aspire to believe exists. In the former all life on the planet lives by killing and consuming other forms of life. If you think about it, this is a terrible place where the only way you can survive is by killing and eating something else. “My God, this salmon over a bed of spinach and rice is perfect,” I proclaim to “I”, who is equally expressive about her delicious tuna salad with its delicate, thin slices of fresh caught tuna.

The reality is no different than that of the Serengeti, 14,763 sq km of endless rolling plains that begin on the Indian Ocean, just north and west of the island of Madagascar and extends North to the Kenyan border and almost to Lake Victoria. In May or early June millions of zebra and wildebeest migrate through the region in search of water and forage as the seasons change. The place becomes a feeding frenzy with predator and prey coming together in large numbers.

I think of myself living in a modern day Serengeti of concrete and steel, where the competition is no less intense. Each day sees numbers of births and deaths—some by accident, some by design, some by old age and natural causes. It just that the humans so far haven’t had to resort to eating one another, though the science fiction thriller Soylent Green predicts that as we overpopulate the planet, we may have to resort to eating one another to survive after we’ve eaten every other life form to extinction.

We finish the main course, and “I” and I decide on a Latte for me and a cup of Earl Gold Tea for her. I shift the conversation from describing the duality of how we view sustaining ourselves, to how we view ourselves. The average human is not the most attractive thing to contemplate. If you look at any evening news broadcast that shows a busy street in any city in this country, you will see the real us. People walking the street come in an endless variety of shapes and sizes.

Most are dressed in clothes that for the most part provide the utility of hiding human nakedness. And yet the sitcom, crime drama, variety show, or rerun movie that play on those same television stations after the news broadcast portray a world where people are largely attractive and pleasant to look at. The commercials aimed at the 18 to 25 year old set portray a world of pristine beauty. The models we see in these 30 to 60 second clips are perfect by comparison to us viewing those images. Our natural instinct is to believe that such a world is somehow achievable—if you spend enough money and buy the right products.

The ability to hold contradictory views of just about anything is what makes us human. Or more likely, the ability to hold contradictory views is what enables us to make life not only bearable but for the most part enjoyable.

Friday November 19, 2004 - A Journey of Struggle

Friday November 19, 2004 - A Journey of Struggle

Yesterday I was in conversation with a workmate over the phone when he mentioned Zorba The Greek and its author Nikos Kazantzakis. “L” said, “did you know he wrote a sequel to Homer’s Odyssey also called Odyssey.” My curiosity was aroused as I have been returning to my college readings including Homer and I had just listened to an audio lecture on Homer’s Odyssey. The Greeks knew a thing or two about good story telling.

I’ve become fixated on Homer’s second work because my advancing years have taught me that we’re all on a journey traveling through time and space. And though we might occupy the same space over time that space is continually changing, as are we. Furthermore, everything that we experience immediately becomes part of the past.

Poor Odysseus spends the first part of Homer’s work journeying home in the process overcoming one hardship after another. Finally, he manages to return to his home in Ithaca only to spend the rest of the Epic defeating the many suitors who have been camped out waiting for Odysseus wife Penelope to choose one of them to replace her long lost husband. She has skillfully managed to keep them at bay all the years of her husband’s absence through feminine guile.

Odysseus does overcome the suitors and reclaims his land and household and that’s where the story ends. Kazantzakis in his epic work—33,333 17-syllable verses—follows Odysseus after he now has to settle down and once again run his farm and manage all the small day-to-day crises that confront any landowner. Talk about a great let down, this has to rank right up there with the Boston Red Sox, post World Series depression bought on by the realization that they no longer have anything to strive for. Only the long suffering Chicago Cubs can claim that distinction, but at least they still have the struggle to endure, which ultimately is what Kazantzakis's modern work revolves around, the need for man to struggle. Strip that away and you are left with nothing, Kazantzakis declares.

My life has been a series of journeys not unlike the Red Sox, though of much shorter duration. The two most recent journeys are the more memorable. In 1990, I had the good fortune of taking over the editorship of a once venerable technical publication, originally owned by a major New York based publishing company. By the time, I took the helm, however, a rust-belt publishing company based in Cleveland owned it. The reality has all the elements of a good joke but I can’t conjure it up.

When I took over, the magazine had been mortally wounded. Its lifeblood, advertising revenues, had been halved by a series of misguided moves intended to “reposition” the publication. To be fair most of these decisions had been made before the Cleveland publisher acquired the magazine, which in reality was thrown into a purchase deal that originally excluded it. This gives you some idea of what an orphan this once great publication had become. When I took over, the wound had been bandaged and the bleeding had stopped but healing the wound and returning the patient to health was a constant struggle. I worked harder than I’d ever worked before: on planes every month extolling the editorial direction to every media buyer in every agency our sales people could put me in front of.

Three years into the venture, it was becoming obvious that the wound was reopening and the bleeding was beginning again. We downsized the publication, moved it to Cleveland and began surviving off the large number of paid subscribers the magazine still had. Instead of a monthly magazine, we began producing a 16-page color newsletter every other week, with a staff of stringers all over the world. This staved off the inevitable for another two years, but in the end the poor beast finally gave out and died. I wrote the obituary in its final editorial and I went on to find another editor position.

The aftermath left me with a great sense of loss and depression. This once great journal began publication in the 1930s at the height of the depression to describe the embryonic world of “electronics”. Now that journey and my nearly ten years of association with it had also come to an end. During those last five years, I wrote two obituaries besides the one I wrote for the publication. One was for an editor who had succumbed to AIDS another was for one who had succumbed to the ravages of age. Every struggle has its casualties.

I had stopped being the editor of that publication which no longer existed. And all the effort and struggle that had been invested in keeping it alive was as so much water flowing beneath a bridge receding into the past with every advancing moment. I was now, “baggage” in hand, standing outside the door of another publication waiting to take the position of editor, which had been vacated shortly before I was to come on board. If I had to wait any length of time before taking up my new position, I would have been completely at a loss. So much adrenalin and nothing to apply it toward.

I’ve learned that without struggle in your life, existing can become tedium with no end in sight. I'm going to have to read Kazantzakis' book.

Thursday November 18, 2004 – An Act of Unkindness

Thursday November 18, 2004 – An Act of Unkindness

I met a Panhandler on my way to work Wednesday morning and the encounter jolted me out of my otherwise complaisant and routine world. It happened after I had been away from San Jose for three days in a place that operates at half the speed of this area and I was still moving slowly, both physically and mentally. I had stopped for gas at a service station in South San Jose, which has the lowest prices of nearly any in the bay area $2.39 for 91 octane gasoline. The station is one of those owned by a no-name gas retailer chain that buys more expensive gas wholesale from the major refiners and sells is at prices below those of the brand name refiners.

This station is a reflection of the patrons that frequent the place: the workingmen and women squeezing the most out of every dollar they have. Today, there is a gardener filling his 20-year-old pick-up loaded down with lawnmowers and leaf blowers not to mention an assortment of tools of his trade. He has a five-gallon gas can he plans to load up for all the motorized tools his truck is toting. The gardener and his helper are both dressed in jeans and sweatshirt ready for a day of manual labor. On the pump on the other side of the island from me is a single woman filling her Toyota Corolla. She’s dressed in a skirt and blouse with a sweater. Hard to say what line of work she might be in. Surprisingly, not all the pumps are occupied. A 10-year-old Nissan abandoned the pump behind me just as I pulled in front of him. The Hispanic driver was around 40 with slightly graying hair.

The three-island, two pump per island station is able to serve twelve vehicles at once. Today, there are about four including the white delivery van on the island and pump farthest from me. The station has to be forty years old. It has been here the 30 years I’ve been driving by it and it was pretty worn looking back then. By that I mean it hasn’t been painted since I’ve been coming. The pumps have been replaced over time with the kind that accepts debit and credit cards. When we first started coming they use to let you pump your gas first then come to the teller window and make your payment. That ended with the first car that filled its tank and drove off with no intention of paying, I want to say it was sometime during the gas crises with long lines during the Carter administration in the 1970s. Since then, the drill is to approach the teller window and provide a sum that represents the most you’ll spend on gas and return when you’ve determined that either you don’t want to spend that amount or your tank just won’t take it all—less of a problem these days when a $20 won’t half fill and empty tank.

The concrete on either side of the islands are pretty stained with spilled gasoline and oil drops from cars with leaky gaskets. The service stalls where once the station made minor repairs are empty, The station now only sell gas, cigarettes, and a small amount of junk food, During the day the teller works with the door to his small area open, but at night the door is locked and all transactions occur through the glass partition that protects the cashier from the world outside. Cash enters and change is dispensed through a metal tray that is fitted into the thick glass partition.

On one occasion when my wife “I” accompanied me to the gas station on the weekend, she pointed out the lady “working” the station. “I” noticed her walk from the far side of the busy highway to the station side—there’s a traffic light intersection with a crosswalk at the side street that T’s into the busy highway—the station is on the corner of this intersection. The lady was dressed in an outfit intended to draw attention to herself, but I had been too busy watching the pump consume my cash in exchange for the meager measure of gasoline it was dispensing to notice. I only became aware of her as I drove off and saw her talking with one of the men pumping gas at the island farthest from the side street and at the pump nearest the busy highway. It was shortly before noon when we stopped. I hope she made a successful transaction.

The station is a nexus for a community of people. I suspect if I were more observant, I would see familiar faces among those filling their tanks all of us drawn here for the same reason—all of us stopping here because of the cheap gas and it’s on our way to where we’re going. But like most people today, we have a check list of things to do and we do them with a blind efficiency that minimizes any other function save the one we’re doing: get gas, pick up take-out, drop off cleaning, pick up cleaning... And associated with each of these functions is a minimum of socializing. The clerk at the pizza place has a fixed vocabulary that he uses repetitively all night. I would guess that he could go through a shift of work without saying more than a 100 unique words. Exacerbating the problem is the station adding new pumps that take credit cards. This has eliminated, not only the need for spoken communications, but also the need for me to approach the casher window, where before I was forced to confront and consider my fellow patrons all queuing to deposit their cash before pumping their gas.

I recall a television program, which explored how humans were teaching monkeys to use keyboards to ask for things. It required learning a simple set of keystrokes to get food, another to get a toy, another to open a door to an adjoining cage, etc. It now appears that the experiment is being conducted on a higher level primate and not only at the gas station, but at the bank ATM machine, the checkout counter, the telephone, and the Internet. We are slowly being removed from human contact—humans are inefficient at doing thing like monetary transactions. The machines do a much better job, they don’t complain, they aren’t nasty to customers, and they don’t require daily sustenance, vacations or biological breaks—they work round the clock 26/7, though they do break down,

As I said in the beginning, on Wednesday morning as I was doing my financial transaction with my favorite pump—I use the same one most every time I come in for gas—I caught sight of a man, who at first I thought belonged to the Toyota Corolla on the other side of the island I was on—the one with the lady, who had gone to the cashier window to deposit her cash, returned to pump her gas, and then had gone back to retrieve her change. When she returned, the man spoke with her and I naturally assumed they were together, though they did not seem to be at first. She smiled at him, said something I could not understand and she got into her car, sat for a moment, and then drove away. The man stood looking after her. He didn’t seem unkempt. He was my height and age—maybe a few years older, a black man dressed in a pull-over V-neck sweater over the top of a brown patterned shirt with brown slacks and lace-up shoes. I paid him no attention—remember direct your effort at the task and hand and then move on—until he spoke to me.

That’s when I looked at him and I saw him for the first time, saw him to be as I described him, saw him to have a look of expectation on his face, saw him to be somewhat nervous and awkward. “Pardon me?” I said in response to his expectant look. “Do you have any change you can spare?” he asked again. At that moment, I was terribly conflicted. On the one hand, I could say “no” and return to completing my transaction with the pump. In San Francisco, when I’m confronted by panhandlers, it’s usually while I’m walking and I simply say “no” and continue on my way. I could do the same now, say “no” complete my transaction with the pump, get in my car and drive away.

But I didn’t. Instead, I reached into my left pocket, where I knew I had spare change and I pulled it out. I look him in the eye and I said, “this is what I have, you’re welcome to it.” I then held out my hand and he reached out his and I gave him the change. A funny thing happened at that point, something I think he and I both recognized at the same time. I had given him what he had asked for. In taking it I think he realized that he had demeaned himself at the meager amount he had exchanged for the loss of dignity the effort had cost him. And in the bargain, I felt badly that I had made him confront the indignity. Had I said “no” he would have felt anger and outrage at having been rebuffed and I would have felt anger at being disturbed in completing my mindless task. How could what I thought was an act of generosity, create so much grief for both parties? I’ve dealt with machines so much that I’m beginning to forget how to deal with people.

Tuesday November 16, 2004 A Few Days in Cambria

Tuesday November 16, 2004 A Few Days in Cambria

Our trip to Cambria began around noon on Sunday, November 14th. My wife “I” and I loaded up her car—hers is newer than mine and has far less mileage, hence ideal for long drives like this one—and headed south on 101 bound for our favorite getaway, Cambria. Since we moved to California, this little town has been a part of our lives and we’ve watched it morph over time into a far more popular destination now than it was when we first started visiting in the late 1970s with our first visit to Hearst Castle.

Cambria sits about three miles north of the California Highway 46 and Highway 1 —the great drive that meanders along the breathtaking coast of California. The small village thrives off a tourist trade, which is drawn by the location—it hugs a stretch of coast battered by the Pacific surf just at a point where the Santa Rosa Creek flows into the ocean. Its second major attraction is the artist community that has sprung up in the village—painters and sculptors and crafts people with their studios strewn about the town. It also draws the new-age spiritualist community—no doubt attracted by the towering and majestic Coastal Mountain Range, a mere 10 miles inland from the sea, which has experienced a deadly earthquake in recent months. Its other major attraction is the many Central Coast wineries that have sprung up over the last two decades along Highway 46 and environs: Wild Horse (their Merlot is one of the best to be found), Castoro Cellars, Bonny Doon, York, Zenaida, Peachy Canyon, and many others.

What’s remarkable about this place is that, someone returning after being gone 50 years would see only that the town has grown, not that it has changed significantly in appearance since they left. The town resides along Main Street. If approached from the north traveling from San Francisco toward LA on Highway 1, you would turn left at Main and you would be on the main drag of the West Village as Cambrians refer to this part of town. On your left heading south and east is the Main Street Grill, an enormous indoor barbecue restaurant—it’s the most popular eatery in town. Further along Main on either side are shops containing a myriad of crafts, T-shirts, trinkets, and souvenirs that you find in every beach resort community. Also lining both sides of Main are real estate offices doing a land office business in vacation rentals as well as in homes and land sales for those who become smitten with the place and have to have a second or retirement home in town as well as for those once smitten and now eager to extricate themselves from rental property. Further down Main on the right is the Cambria Lawn Bowling Club—it’s very active during the day with plenty of lawn bowlers—and a small theater, the Pewter Plough Playhouse.

At this point you pass out of the main part of the West Village—where the tourist like to hang out—and head toward the East Village, another favorite with tourist and the larger part of town. You pass the Cambria Grammar School on your right—it would look right at home in the 1940s, a hill top shopping center on your left, accessed by a short but steep winding road, and a few road side businesses on your right—the chic Bistro Sole restaurant, a strip mall with more restaurants and sundry stores. Then you come to a stop sign. Making a right takes you up Burton Drive toward Highway 1. Along the way you’ll pass more restaurants—Robin’s Nest for one—and hotels such as The Squibb House.

Proceeding through the stop sign at Main and Burton, you’d be in the main part of the East Village with grocery stores, bakeries, a Bank of America, restaurants—lots of restaurants: Linn’s, Sow’s Ear, among others. At the intersection of Bridge Street and Main, a right turn takes you past the town’s U.S. Post Office and then carries you in a circle back to Burton Drive. Proceeding through the intersection will take you through the village and along a stretch of road that eventually ends at Highway 1.

What I like most about this place is that it has a personality. It reminds me of one large bed and breakfast resort where the community is a family that welcomes these throngs of guests continually streaming through. The flow is greatest on Friday and Saturday, but during the warmer months after spring break and through Labor Day, the stream is heavy even through the week as tourist drive California 1 and stay a day or two in Cambria. Even the off-season provides the town a steady stream of visitors mostly on the weekend but retirees make a point of visiting during the week when there are no crowds and the pace of the town if more to their liking.

Cambria is also unique in that it has few major chains of any kind in town, no burger places, no supermarket chain, no recognizable store or restaurant chain. It’s like this trademark-free, brand-free zone. The only exceptions are a Chevron and Shell station in the East and West Village, respectively, the Bank of America in the East Village and a Best Western on Moonstone Drive. For all of us who are besieged daily by a constant flood of messages driving home branded products, Cambria is like an oasis in a desert and a welcome retreat. We seldom watch television or listen to the radio when we’re here, not even to catch the news. When we return to San Jose, we’re pleasantly surprised at the events that have gone on since we’ve left.

Visitors from the UK feel right at home as many of the street names in the residential area are British: Hastings, Wellington, Dover, Downing, Weymouth, Yorkshire… Indeed, Cambria is the Roman name for the area now mostly known as the country of Wales in the UK. Moreover, the bed and breakfast hotels that populate the town, especially along Moonstone Beach Drive are decorated in a fashion that would not be out of place in the UK, canopied beds and flowery wallpaper. Teatime in Cambria, however, is replaced with wine and cheese at the more chi-chi B&Bs.

Moonstone Beach Drive is the place we hang out during our stay. The drive parallels Highway 1 and runs along the shore ten or twenty feet above and a few hundred feet from the persistent surf that is eating away at the cliff, which is inching its way toward the road and the B&Bs beyond. There is nothing to do along the beach except surf, walk along the boardwalk the town has installed the length of the drive in front of the B&Bs to keep visitors from destroying the cliff-top flora, or drink wine and look at the ocean—the passtime most visitors indulge in. We like to read and write besides the other passtimes except surfing.

We’ve stayed at nearly every B&B along Moonstone and each one has its own appeal. And each contains a diary where guests can enter their thoughts. It’s a pencil and paper blog but kept current by the constant stream of new visitors filling the pages with musings. The writing is as you might expect, where the guests found the best food in town, the best bottle of wine, who they met, why they are there, what they did during the day and night. The exhibitionist in us all produces the content, the voyeur in us all find the diary compelling to read. There is the occasional story of someone passing through on a journey to forget or remember a loved one, who left of their own accord or was taken by fate in an accident or by natural causes. The words are a heartfelt attempt to express a grief that this place with its natural beauty has somehow made less burdensome.

We’ve often considered living in Cambria but “I” and I both realize that the place, despite its beauty, would soon wear on you. It’s a great place to contemplate your life but not one where you would want to live it.

Monday November 15, 2004 - Restaurant As Metaphor for Civilization

Monday November 15, 2004 - Restaurant As Metaphor for Civilization

It’s nearly 4:00 PM on Monday afternoon in a small bed & breakfast with an ocean view on Moonstone Drive in Cambria, California. We arrived back at our room just after 2:00 PM and the view out our window was gloomy. There was a shroud of fog covering everything and we despaired of a second lovely sunset to match the lingering one we watched on Sunday evening. Now, only a couple of hours later, the fog has completely burned away and the sun is a bright ball in the western sky drawing a wide line of blazing white in the undulating ocean from the horizon all the way to the shore. That same sun waning along the western edge of the Americas is already awakening the denizens of the Pacific Islands and the mainland of Asia.

Sitting in this serene and beautiful place, you can ponder the place of humanity in this larger world. The sun that is illuminating Cambria and Tokyo concurrently has hung in that same sky for millions of years doing today the exact same thing it has done for millennia before. If the dinosaur is an approximate analogy to humans—they roamed this earth for many more years than mammals, then will our legacy be as theirs: a species that existed much as any other life form on this planet or any other planet until it expired through natural calamity as did the dinosaur or through an exhaustion of will—the gene pool gave out and ceased producing life forms able to cope with the changing conditions of the planet?

Last night I sat watching a popular restaurant next door to the place we’re staying. At 5:00 PM, the place was empty and cleaned the night before. Every table had been set with fresh tablecloths and clean silverware and cloth napkins adorned each dining room table. The bar, the most popular attraction in the place, was likewise cleaned and well ordered. Partially filled bottles of liquor and wine were poised for the day’s rush of eager patrons. The bar tables were likewise wiped down, the floor cleaned and scrubbed to remove the last reminders of the previous night’s trade. Outside, a line was forming of expectant clientele—the place does not take reservations, a great marketing ploy.

As soon as the doors open, the line entered the bar and took their seat for the evening. Most have come to drink first—since as long as you’re drinking you’ve a right to your place at the bar—and later to have bar food in lieu of a proper evening meal. These hearty souls have gathered to celebrate the end of the day and last night they were treated to a lingering sunset pink that dipped slowly into the western horizon, seemingly sinking into the waters of the pacific. Most of the patrons—caught up in conversations—probably caught only fleeting glimpses of the dying rays of the sun, more intent on the celebration rather than its cause.

As the evening progressed from my upstairs window looking into the many windows along the side of the restaurant, I’m struck by the continuous activity I’m seeing. There is a steady stream of waiters and waitresses moving back and forth from the kitchen to the bar in the front of the building and from the kitchen to the restaurant in the rear of the building. As one group of bar goers and restaurant patrons leave, another group arrives to take their place. What makes the empty building alive is the living beings serving and consuming the alcohol and sustenance the restaurant produces.

The restaurant is a living entity as a result. It subsists off the steady stream of revenue produced from the thirsty and hungry patrons. And just as any living creature, it must cope with the tendency toward disorder and chaos that plagues anything that is alive. In the case of the restaurant it’s the disorder produced by the production and consumption of food and drink. Each day, that mess has to be cleaned up and made ready to repeat the process: kitchen, dining room, and bar scrubbed and sanitized to stave off the insect and animal gleaners. As with any system, the effort toward order is never 100 percent complete thus each effort falls some small percent behind the previous effort. The cumulative effect eventually destroys the entity, which survives by being completely rebuilt or replaced.

Civilization is the great restaurant of humanity. It is continuously being driving toward disorder only to be pushed back into order at enormous expense by those benefiting from this order. If civilizations of the past are any indication, the lifetime of a culture, the Roman for example, is a few hundred years as their creative energy enabled order to prevail over disorder and for the culture to expand and grow. Once those few hundred years past, then disorder slowly began to win out and the civilization gradually fell into chaos. Modern culture seems to follow the same pattern if the colonial empires of the 19th century are any indication. If the pattern follows true, then the hegemony of capitalism may be racing pell-mell toward its epoch, if it hasn’t already achieved it.

With my half-century on this earth, I can look back over the history of the civilization I call my own and marvel at what has transpired. My grandfather born before the turn of the 20th Century was the product of the First World War. My father was the product of the Second World War and the Korean Conflict. I was the product of the Viet Nam War and the information revolution. My children and grand children will only know a world that is instantly connected and always on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You could reason that such progress would break the cycle of order giving way to disorder. I hope so, for my progeny’s sake, I really hope so.

Saturday November 13, 2004 Curtain Up, Light the Lights...

Saturday November 13, 2004 Curtain Up, Light the Lights...

What most amazes me when I first arrive the day of the conference is the metamorphosis that has occurred in the rooms since I left the night before. Everything looks as if it has been there all the time: the displays around the perimeter of the exhibition hall and in the conference hall the neat rows of white cloth bedecked tables accompanied by a formation of perfectly arranged chairs all looking forward at a empty stage in front of a massive wall of black curtain running the length of the room and in-circling the two huge back lit screens at either end of the hall. Spotlights illuminate both the podium and long table set for six panelist each with a surrogate microphone standing in their place at the table atop the stage.

I mount the steps to the stage and begin attaching my Sony Vaio Notebook to the cable that will drive both large screens. As the notebook powers up, I look into the spotlights in the two corners of the hall beaming a bright light into my eyes. I’m still able to see the formation of chairs that will soon have people staring back at the presenter atop the stage in this very spot. But they will have a much clearer view of the speaker than the speaker of them. “Function F7” and after a few seconds of delay both screens blast a view of my notebook desktop to the empty hall. Opening the desktop folder with the day’s worth of 30-minute presentations, I select the keynote and double click. Another delay and the title slide jumps out of both screens. Clicking on the presentation icon and the screens fill with the entire title slide of the presentation. Suddenly the music to Gypsy gets stuck in my head: “Curtain up, light the lights, we’ve gotten nothing to hit but the heights…” That might not be how the lyric goes, but that’s what’s playing in my head as I bound off stage and return to the exhibition area to see how quickly the opening day crowd is arriving.

I can’t sit still. I can’t eat. I can’t drink anything. About the only thing I can do is pop hard candy, more pleasant in appearance than chewing gum. It’s 30 minutes to show time and my first presenter is not to be found. I’m getting a bit stressed, though I’m sure he’ll arrive in plenty of time. When he does arrive 15 minutes later, he’s seems slightly nervous and probably regretting the large breakfast he’s just completed in the hotel restaurant. We shake hands, exchange greetings. I’ve known him over the years as he’s risen in the ranks of his company to second in command to the President and CEO. I take him into the conference area and up onto the stage, show him the computer and get him familiar with the controls. He clicks through all the slides of his presentation and ensures I have the latest version. He’s satisfied and we bring the presentation back to the title slide. I walk him back to the exhibit area where I see my president and CEO, who will introduce this our first speaker. I introduce the two of them and let them get acquainted while I check on other details just to have something to do in the minutes before I have to get the show on the road.

It’s five minutes before show time and there is a large, noisy crowd of people in the exhibition area talking to one another, eating the breakfast pastries and fruit while drinking coffee. I walk up to a microphone in the corner of the hall, and tap it twice to determine it’s live and begin speaking as loud as I can, no easy task for a man who’s wife continually chides him for speaking far too softly to be heard. “We’re about to start our morning program in five minutes. Please take your Danish and coffee with you and proceed into the conference room area.” I repeat a different version of this exhortation twice more and I begin to see the crowd slowly begin moving into the conference area. I rush into the exhibition hall and mount the stage and begin speaking into the podium mike: “Can I get everyone to take their seats so we can begin our first presentation?” I repeat a different variation of this request a second and third time.

Down from the stage, I return to the mike in the exhibition hall and repeat the request to get everyone into the conference room as the program will begin in one minute. I notice the last of the stragglers beginning to move toward the conference room entrance. It’s time to start the show. “Curtain up, light the lights, we’ve gotten nothing to hit but the heights…” Its still stuck in my head. Up on the stage at the podium mike again, I begin the housekeeping announcements. “On behalf of our sponsors…, I’d like to welcome you to the third annual….conference and exhibition. We have a great program for you today, 14 presentations on a wide variety of topics related to the… industry. Immediately after lunch, we’ll have a lively panel discussion on the importance of… Please be sure to join us after the programs complete for an open bar reception. Now, I’d like to introduce … President and CEO, Mr…. who will make some remarks and introduce our keynote speaker.

The CEO takes the stage and begins a short presentation on the value of a conference and exhibition like this one that brings customers and vendors together… “Now, it is my great privilege to introduce … who began his career… My CEO welcomes our speaker to the stage, shakes his hand and leaves the podium.

There is an awkward moment of silence as the speaker reacquaints himself with the computer and get accustomed to the full room of expectant eyes all waiting for him to say something profound. He begins with a joke that gets a small courtesy laugh from the back of the room and on he goes, pushing the down arrow on the Sony keyboard to move the presentation to the first slide. The remainder of the day is a sequence of introductions followed by brief question and answer sessions. During the day, the crowd resembles an amorphous blob sometimes filling the room to near capacity and at others leaving it with large islands of open seating.

We break for lunch at 12:15, our appointed time and the conference area becomes deserted as the crowd files into the exhibition hall now a sea of 10-seat round tables clothed and place set ready for the eager diners. In no time at all there is not an empty seat in the room and the hotel staff begin setting additional rounds in the hall outside. In a operation that runs with near military precision, each table is served a salad course beginning at the one side of the room and sweeping like a wave to the other. As soon as the entire room has been served, the wave begins where it started with salad plates being removed and replaced with an entrée designated by a letter on the badge hanging by a lanyard around each attendees neck B, C, or V: New York steak, Chicken Piccata, and vegetable Napoleon. The wave repeats with dessert and coffee. And an hour later, I’m exhorting the crowd to return to the conference room to resume the presentations. I’ve still subsisting on hard candy. The thought of food makes me nauseous.

The afternoon sessions follow the pattern of the morning and in no time the last presentation completes to general applause from the sparse audience of attendees intent on hearing every last talk. I thank them for their attention, complement them on their being a great audience and invite them to join the reception going on in the exhibition area where there is a general din of activity as I follow the last of the audience out of the conference room. There is another hour or two of house keeping details to prepare for the following day, but the Tuesday routine assures me that Wednesday will be a repeat of today. “There’s no business like show business, like no business I know…”

Friday November 12, 2004 - Prepping for a Show

Friday November 12, 2004 - Prepping for a Show

I’ve been totally consumed with the preparation and execution of a conference and exhibition the past several days. It has been exhausting, exhilarating, as well as bittersweet. You might call it post-conference depression. For three days the adrenalin is pumping through you constantly from the time you wake each morning to the time you close your eyes at night and drift into sleep. And even in sleep your mind wrestles with a myriad of problems you’ve yet to solve as well as guilt dreams about all the problems you allowed to crop up.

Beginning is the most nerve-wracking time. You enter the large cavernous space or a hotel convention facility and it’s a shell with several rows of linen draped tables arranged in classroom style with rows of empty chairs all sitting in mute anticipation of the burden that will descend upon them within a matter of hours. In that interim, there are a myriad of things that must occur. The audio-visual contractors are busily running cables around the perimeter of the room connecting microphones at speaker podiums and panelist chairs in a long table beside the podium where six anxious speakers will try their damnedest not to say something that will make themselves look stupid or far worse, unhip. Both podium and panelist table are elevated atop 3-ft high risers that form a stage of roughly 18-ft long by 6-ft wide. Another group is erecting two large 14-foot backlit projection screens on either end of a room twice as wide as it is deep. All along the length of the room on either side of the large screens 16-foot tall curtains of black drape covers the unsightly collection of wires, boxes and other paraphernalia.

That’s only half of the overnight construction project that must be completed. An area identical in size to the conference room and sharing a common air wall is completely empty except for a long just under inch thick black cable that is distributing thousands of watts of power at 20 different spots around the perimeter of the room. At each equidistantly spaced locations a 10 foot pop-up booth will sit behind a table-full of equipment, literature, and giveaways. Late afternoon on Monday the hotel staff was wheeling out the pop up exhibits and depositing them in front of each spot on the perimeter. A paper diagram identifies the location of each exhibit as well as a printed piece of paper containing the name of the exhibitor laid on top of a table sitting at each of the 20 locations.

Within an hour, the owners of those spots are busily constructing their gypsy storefront in anticipation of an bevy of business they are expecting to do the following day. I have to deliver that business so they will be content for the outrageous rent I’m charging for their two-day lease on this prime piece of real estate. Once the exhibitors begin their construction, the time is filled with an endless stream of requests for a second table, extra power strips, two-sided tape, help finding errant boxes that should have arrived last Friday…

Meanwhile in the conference side, the AV guys are anxious to get a PC connected to their high powered LCD projectors to align the projector with the screen so that the hundreds of pages of PowerPoint presentation foils all display within the boundaries of the screen. Once hooked up, the mini-Sony Vaio notebook drives each presentation it has stored in its “Conference Presentations” folder on the desktop is put through its paces. We’re running the whole conference in fast forward mode each slide to see no information intended for display is somehow obscured. In the background the sound of “test 1, 2, 3” is being repeated like a religious mantra alternating with the word “check” spoken with a sharp edge to see if the huge mixer and amplifier get thrown into some form of distortion.

Sometime around 8;30 Monday evening, both rooms are transformed with two huge 12-foot banners hanging on either side of the raised speaker podium and panelist table. Atop the table and podium, each microphone stands at an angular attention, slightly obscured by place cards identifying each panelist with only the moderator’s name hidden. His name will sit atop the podium when the panel promptly begins at 1:00 PM on Tuesday. Two other 12-foot banners in the exhibition area grace the top of the air wall shared with the conference room. Below the signs arrayed around the inside walls of the exhibition hall are 20 brightly decorated booths festooned with company and product signage, all extolling the virtues of the company occupying that space.

In the hallway outside the exhibition hall are stacks of boxes containing presentation materials for the attendees as well as a line of notebook computers and a printer all ready to identify and register each person that will come through the door on the following day. A five-foot ten or so tall, stocky built, but pleasant looking security guard sits across from the row of tables supporting computers and printer. Inside the exhibition area, another security guard, of about the same height but of a slighter build holds a lonely vigil in front of an exhibit booth containing at least $100,000 worth of equipment.

I leave for the evening with a sense of anticipation about the first day of the event. I’ve made a list of all the things I need to do from the time I arrive at 7:15 Tuesday morning until the opening bell rings for the conference to begin. I’ve not had anything but two cups of coffee since I woke up Monday morning and I decide to treat myself to a hamburger in the hotel bar. For some reason I crave greasy food when I’m stressed out and anxious. From the time I leave the hotel and make my way to home and an early turn-in, the clock is ticking relentless toward that moment when the crowd is called to order and the show begins.

Tomorrow I’ll tell you how the first day went.

Sunday November 7, 2004 - Of Another Place, Of Another Time

Sunday November 7, 2004 - Of Another Place, Of Another Time

A couple of weeks back, I talked to my dad on the phone about the time he retired from the service. I had left the family when my dad was stationed in Ft. Lewis Washington. Shortly after I enlisted and shipped out for recruit training in San Diego, he was transferred to Ft Benning, Georgia. He was getting tired of the service by then. He was past retirement age so within a year of his transfer, he decided to put in his papers and hang it up. That time in my life I was completely oblivious of what was going on with my family only where they were living and the monthly goings on.

Living in a military family back in the 1950s was living among a wandering tribe of gypsies that looked out for one another. On at least one occasion we opened our house a family we had known during a tour of duty in Puerto Rico, who was relocating to Ft. Bliss. It was also a time when deals were struck between individuals on a handshake and each party knew that the pact was inviolate. I was stuck by one of the last such deals my dad struck as he left Ft Benning. Our conversation went like this.

Me: I left in June of 63. You must have been transferred shortly after that.

Dad: Everybody in my company was going to Ft. Benning, Georgia. So, I got down there and I had to go out and get me one of those house trailers. I bought one of those and when I got ready to leave, I didn’t want to bring it out here. The government would have moved it out here free of charge.

But an old boy there, he had been in the service longer than I had, and so he was getting ready to retire in another year or two. So I said to him, “Melcher, I have a good deal for you if you want to take it.” I told him “I’d let you have this damn trailer, just take over the payments on it and you’ll have a home when you retire. He said, “you mean that?” and I said, “Yeah I mean it.” So he said “Mac I take you up on that.” I said “one other thing…I had bought a refrigerated air conditioning and put that in the trailer. I told him “you’re going to have to pay for that.”

So I guess he’s taken care of it because I know nobody ever bothered me about it. If he hadn’t paid for it, they would have been after me. But anyway I know he was an honest old boy. But anyway, I was talking to him one day and I said, “You got to have some place to go when you get out the service.” He didn’t have no mother or father, sisters or brothers, you know. I said to him “the government is willing to move that damn thing any where you want to put it.” I told him “the thing you ought to do is go buy yourself a little piece of land and sit the trailer on it and then you got your own place, buddy.

You know I tried to keep in touch with that old boy but I didn’t do it. I know he paid for it cause wouldn’t they’d a come looking for me.

M: What’s his name again?

D: Melcher, a German name I believe.

M: What’s his first name?

D: Oh shit, I done forgotten now. We use to call him Mel all the time. I can’t think of it… I called him Mel all the time.

M: How old was he? Was he younger than you?

D: No, he was about the same age. We was all World War II veterans. But he went in ahead of me. He went in under this deal when guys went in for six months or some such bullshit or another. He had a few years on me in the service. He had 23 years, I think, in the service by the time I got out. I only had 21. So anyway we was pretty close together.

I told him “buddy, you need some place to call home when you get out of here. Don’t, you’d be staying in hotel and motels and rooming house and what have you.” He said, “no, you’re right Mac, you’ve got a point there.” And he said “I can’t turn down an offer like this.” I told him “just take over the payments and it’s all yours,” I didn’t put much down on it when I bought it no way. I forget now what it was. That sucker might still be down there in Georgia.

M: He could be. He might have just drove it off the base and set it up on a piece of property and it’s still there.

D: It wasn’t on the post. It was in Mockingbird Trailer Court. That was not on the post… Oh he might have bought a piece of property out there some place and put the trailer on it. See I was paying for the site it, the trailer, was sitting on. It wasn’t much.

M: you had to pay rent plus the cost of the trailer.

D: Right. It wasn’t too much at that time.

For as long as I can remember, my father would strike bargains like this. His close friend Charles Upton trusted my dad so completely that he gave him full power of attorney to handle all his legal matters. My father paid Mr. Upton’s bills, made sure his medication was purchased and administered correctly each day. He took Mr. Upton to the doctor on a regular basis. On one visit, Mr. Upton’s doctor commented to my dad that had the old man been put into a nursing home, he would have been dead years ago.

Saturday November 6, 2004 – The Virus of Humanity

Saturday November 6, 2004 – The Virus of Humanity

What is the meaning of life? After living over a half a century you would think I would have gained some insight into that question but all I can offer is observations about what I’ve seen over that long period of time. The first realization everyone coming into the world realizes is that life is about struggle. When our oldest daughter was born and I first saw that frail little being, I saw a creature that had just undergone a struggle that is inconceivable to most adults: the Herculean battle to be born. And she showed the effects of that protracted conflict, lasting from late afternoon to just after midnight. Her wee face was squeezed and reddened with one eye slightly swollen and nearly shut. Looking at the picture taken of her only moments old, she had the appearance of a boxer after a grueling fight.

Think about the fact that coming into this world is a monumental struggle and only those hardy enough to withstand its rigors survive. As I was holding my daughter for the first time, I was struck by how solid she was. And when she kicked her leg or moved her arm, there was force in the movements that belied her frail appearance. While our M took her time coming into the world, our daughter R was having none of that. My wife “I” spent a full day of contractions before she suddenly sensed that R was on her way. And she was not going to take her time about coming either. Within an hour, “I” was in an ambulance being rushed from her doctor’s office in Plano, Texas to the hospital in Richardson less than 10 miles south. She made it out of the ambulance and delivered within minutes of entering the delivery room.

Looking at both my daughters immediately after their birth, I was struck by the fact that neither of us knew the other. We were no different than two siblings suddenly meeting decades after being separated at birth. Both my daughters and I were blood kin and we each knew it instinctively, knew that we had a bond, that held us to one another, but we were strangers. Both the kids were lucky in that neither could talk and it was left for the parents to try to make the first step in getting child and parent to know one another.

But, wait, I’m getting off onto a tangent. When each of my wee babies looked up at me for the first time, they knew nothing of me, nothing of their surroundings, nothing of the bright, noisy place they had just entered. At this point, their only concern was comfort, food, and absence of pain. Everything else was gratuitous input for an extraordinarily absorbent mind. If they were not comfortable, they felt pain, or they were hungry, they did the only thing they could at that young age to address the problem they cried and they struggled as best their muscular but uncoordinated body could. And I understood they wanted and felt in their physical exertion the magnitude of that want.

The struggle does not end at childbirth. It continues on as the child fights to get control of its limbs, first the neck, then the arms, and finally the legs. You watch as they learn to roll, then to crawl, and eventually to walk. At each stage in their evolution, you see this creature wrestling to control itself first physically, then emotionally. Many mistakes result in pain, falling down after standing upright for the first time, rolling off a bed onto a carpeted floor and sensing the sensation of gravity and coping with the physics of collision… The two strangers in a strange land learning what causes pain and is to be avoided—fire, electric power outlets, stairs,… Much of a child’s early life is confronting and overcoming the hazards of the world they encounter. I recall the scraped knees, the bloody lip, and many other childhood injuries I cringe over now in retrospect. But they survived them all and learned from each how to avoid the hazard the next time.

This whole process of banging into the hidden traps continues your whole life. I remember our daughters’ first cars and the accidents each had in them, neither resulting in injury, though my daughter R totaled an Oldsmobile Cutlass ramming a light pole sideways as the car fish tailed during a u-turn on a rain slick road. To what purpose is all of this anguish intended? I see both our daughters now with children of their own, carrying on in pretty much the same fashion as we did with them. But the world we reside in now is entirely different from the world we inhabited when they were both infants. Their generation and the one between theirs and ours have made the world different, not better, not worse, just different and the same will be the case for their children and so on.

Humans are no different than the viruses that inhabit a host, proliferate, and die. The time scale is much compressed compared with humans. But the effect is the same. Earth is the host and we are the colonizing virus. We’re consuming our host, which is mindless to our presence. Earth will remain long after the virus of humankind has ceased to be just as the host remains in the wake of a spent virus. The larger question is why the virus, why the humans? Just as the right conditions allow the virus to thrive in its host, so too the ideal conditions of earth, enable humankind to propagate at a geometric rate. Without the ideal conditions, human would cease just like the virus. Is it the lucky roll of the dice that we are the cells in this elaborate virus? Or is their divine providence guiding the continuing struggle of humankind?

Friday November 5, 2005 A Nation of Blues and Reds

Friday November 5, 2005 A Nation of Blues and Reds

I’m still struck by the image of the U.S. map shown on television broadcasts of the Presidential Election a couple of days ago. There were 48 contiguous states plus Alaska and Hawaii and the vast majority were all colored red, with New England, the Great Lake, and the Western-most states the only ones in blue. There were two striking messages that came out of that image. One, so few blue states controlled so many electoral votes. Two, why were those blue states on the outskirts of the country the only ones voting blue while the rest of the country was solidly voting red?

You could make a broad generalization about these states being progressive on the leading edge of breaking trends. Illinois, California, Washington, Oregon, and New York and the New England states could all be lumped into a category of heavily populated by upwardly mobile urbanites and suburbanites who view themselves embracing change and adapting to new ideas and ways of doing things. Being a card-carrying member of the computer revolution, I have marched in lock step with nearly every major advance in electronic and computing technology since the early 1960s.

What is becoming increasingly apparent to me in today’s world is we’ve reached a point where the technology revolution has run out of gas. The computer I’m typing this blog on is identical in operation to the computer I worked on in 1965 aboard a ship sailing in the Pacific between Australia and Asia. The earlier one had vacuum tubes and transistors and was the size of a walk-in refrigerator, but it functioned exactly the same as this chic Sony Vaio sitting on my lap. The same computer engine can be found in cell phones, digital cameras, set top boxes, digital camcorders, I could on.

All that has happened in the last half of the 20th Century is we’ve repackaged a technology that was developed to make humans more productive during the Second World War, deciphering encrypted codes, directing rockets and artillery shells toward their targets, keeping track of the flow of men and equipment as an Army moved into battle. The computer programmer of the 1950s would understand much of what the programmer of today is doing and the computer architect of the past could easily converse with computer designers of today.

What has begun to happen now is that we’ve produce far more computers than any one individual can use. I would be willing to bet that in every household in the blue states, you’re likely to find far more computers on average than you would find in the households of red states. I’m counting the computers in microwave ovens, white goods, cars, audio equipment, television sets and cable boxes. The gear head households in the blue states would have more computing gear than the head-of-households in the red states.

The reality is we really don’t need all that equipment but we keep buying it because it adds features. How many car owners really use their navigation computers? How many cell phone users use anything but the talk and listen function on their phones. Kids use ring tones and do text messaging but that’s to be expected. They’re kids and have time on their hands with nothing better to do than find new things to do with their phone including play games. And the equipment manufacturers and their marketing consultants have worked long and hard to create needs for us to buy all this new equipment. They have successfully replaced the vinyl record with CDs, the videocassette with the DVD, and now, the CD with MP3 players. They have also created a new must have gadget in the personal computer and portable digital assistant—the electronic Rolodex and pocket calendar in one.

Add to this the cell phone, answering machine, e-mail and instant messaging and you have turned the average person into a multitasking fool. However, is it possible that a large proportion of the country—those painted red on the map—really don’t want this fast paced life? I hear stories on NPR in which successful college-educated professional are getting married and moving to small towns to raise their children in a “normal” environment, safely away from the rat race all of them left to seek out the simpler, slower pace of small town America.

At 17 years old, the life in Middle America is what I left and have resisted returning to for a number of reasons, most of them probably irrational. I needed the energy and intellectual stimulation of the go-go urban centers. I needed the sense of being on the edge of what the human experiment was producing. As I’ve gotten older my fascination with that on-going human enterprise continues unabated. I lament to think that the number of places you can go in this country to get that kind of experience is limited to a handful of blue states on the perimeter of this great nation. My great fear is the collective will of this country to embrace the challenges of the future is slowly being broken.

Thursday November 4, 2004 – The Political Pendulums Swings

Thursday November 4, 2004 – The Political Pendulums Swings

Well the die is cast and we are now looking at four more years of conservative Republican politics. If you look at the map of the United States with the bright red and blue colored states it should become abundantly clear that the majority of the states in this great nation preferred the republicans to the democrats.

After being around for several decades, I can say that I’ve seen my share of political swings. Born in the last decade of the Second World War, I was the product of an incredible economic recovery from a worldwide depression at its height ten years before I was born to its ascendancy ten years after my birth in the middle of the 1950s. Dwight Eisenhower was in office and would serve his full two terms.

Back then, the nation was of a staunchly conservative bent. It was the era of Joseph McCarthy and the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC). It was the conservative right leading a campaign of terror against the liberal left. Hollywood with its left leaning tendencies was singled out for attack, with McCarthy using the HUAC’s subpoena power to command a series of high profile witnesses from the movie industry to come forward and testify. Eventually the White House recognized McCarthy for the rogue he was and set about undermining him and his campaign of terror.

McCarthy was a lightning rod that catalyzed the national's fear around a hidden enemy, Communism. He insinuated that it was a cancer that hid within the healthy tissue of the American system, wrecking havoc on an unsuspecting nation. McCarthy exploited a basic human fear for this own political agenda. In the process he damaged the American vision of tolerance and acceptance of divergent ideological views.

The 1950s passed and I grew older reaching draft age in the early 1960s. I was part of a generation of children born in the aftermath of a great world war, who had never known what it was to want. All of our parents had been affected by the Great Depression and an overwhelming international war and these major traumas marked their collective memories with an understanding of want and hardship. I think it also made them long for a halcyon time when the world was perfect and life was idyllic. The result was the 1950s, the era that gave birth to Disneyland. Father Knows Best, Ozzie & Harriet, and Leave it to Beaver.

When my generation came of age, this age of gentility was passé. Everything our parents wanted, we wanted no part of. The libertine John Kennedy, who after his assassination was followed by Lyndon Johnson—a redneck liberal if ever I saw one—replaced Eisenhower, the symbol of monogamous propriety. The sexual revolution began. Johnson’s landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 once enacted set about eliminating the inequalities that minorities, especially blacks and women, had endured since the nation began.

Johnson’s undoing was the Viet Nam War to contain the communist menace that McCarthy had so successfully convinced this country we should fear. Just as after eight years of Republican rule, the country grew tired of eight years of democratic rule, in which President Kennedy, his brother Robert, and Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King were gunned down and major cities the East, Northeast and West saw the worst demonstrations and rioting in its history.

The country wanted an end to the turmoil and they turned to the Republicans and their standard bearer Richard Nixon, who set about putting right the international mess we’d gotten ourselves into. The early 1970s was an era in which my generation suddenly woke up from an extended party of alcohol, drugs, and sexual indulgence to the realization that they needed to turn all that reckless energy into making money. And they did just that.

By the time my generation’s children were entering high school in the early 1980s, the country had nearly impeached Nixon, dumped his well-meaning but ineffective successor Gerald Ford for a Southern Baptist, Jimmy Carter. And despite an earnest desire to do the right thing, Carter was felled by a failed policy in Iran that resulted in a protracted hostage take over by Muslim extremists and a failed military venture to rescue them.

The powerful military and economic giant seemed impotent to move against a third-world Middle Eastern nation, who took delight in taunting the superpower. The country wanted a leader that exuded strength and it found it in Ronald Reagan, the man epitomized the “Marlboro Man” image this country has of itself. Reagan a product of the 1950s, succeeded in bringing the communist boogie man of his era to heel, thus giving the nation back its decades of lost face: first in Viet Nam, then in the Middle East. Curiously, the Middle East continued to bedevil the American presidency. Reagan lost 241 service men to a terrorist bombing of the Marine Barracks in Beirut, Lebanon on October 23, 1983 with nothing to show for the loss of life.

The republicans held the White House four years after Reagan left office through the one term of George Herbert Walker Bush. He was displaced by another southerner, William Jefferson Clinton, the 42nd President of the nation. Clinton was a throw back to the libertine ways of John Kennedy, though lacking in Kennedy’s good looks and his good fortune of having a press that looked the other way at his peccadilloes.

Clinton bitterly divided the nation between the conservative, bible-belt, family values camp, and the liberal, free spirit, and ultra tolerant camp. The liberals thought Clinton’s impeachment proceeding was the work of right-wing extremism. However, I don’t think anyone realized how badly his very public peccadillo had offended the sensibilities of what in the 1960s was termed the “silent majority”. They are the great masses that go to church every Sunday, complain about the immoral programming that network and cable television produces, and patronizes Disneyland, McDonalds, and Walmart.

When offered a choice between Al Gore and George W. Bush, they chose the latter. And when they were once again offered the choice between a man who said he was against Gay Marriage but for Civil Unions and another who wanted to create a Constitutional Amendment banning Gay Marriage, they chose the latter. They were simply tired of having their sensibilities offended. The democrats had been painted with too many of the values (not policies) Middle Americans were unwilling to accept. (San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom may have written his political obituary with his campaign for gay rights.)

The most telling evidence of the pent up energy propelling the "silent majority" was so obvious that no one saw it. It was Mel Gibson's "Passion." If there was one advertisement that catalyzed the conservative right and drew to it large numbers of followers it was Gibson's blockbuster movie. The left had its 90-minute or so retort to Gibson's tome in Fahrenheit 911, but the box office receipts of the respective films foretold the outcome of the election far sooner than did the ballot box.

Hey we're looking at four more years before the center of the country realizes we moved back to the 1950s. By then they'll be fed up with the right and swing back to the left. Politics are an e-ticket ride, no?

Wednesday November 3, 2004 – There's No Business Like Show Business

Wednesday November 3, 2004 – There's No Business Like Show Business

Next week I’m putting on a show. Well more like a conference/exhibition and though I’m putting it together, someone else is footing the bill. I’ve been doing this for the past several years and I’ve beginning to wonder if maybe this isn’t what I do. You know, like every one does something. Maybe creating an experience is what I do. I dress up in a nice suit get to carry around a microphone and stand up in front of a large audience and introduce individual performers to take the stage and give us a show.

Humans respond to a gathering in which some one stands up and tells you something. Ideally, you want the stand-up to have something interesting to say and be able to say it in a manner that compels the audience to listen. At the event held in Boston earlier this year, we had just such a speaker. He was our keynote presenter, a bright PhD with a long history in his field, which he knew intimately. He took the stage and from the moment he walked on and began to speak, the audience sat is rapt attention.

I wonder what it is about a “happening” that turns people on. In reality, it’s no different than the traveling circus that comes into town, pitches their tents, and invites everyone to come and see something completely different than anything they have around these parts. An event like ours is very similar in that we come into town, but instead of pitching a tent, we hire out a chi chi hotel meeting facility where we set up our exhibition and our conference rooms.

I was inspecting the facility yesterday. I knew the cavernous hall quite well from having held the event there twice before. There were three groups in attendance at this “walk-through”: our guys, the hotel banquet manager, and the audio-visual guys. Our guys wanted to know that the banquet manager understood how we wanted the rooms set up—how many rows of tables and how many rows of chairs to seat up to 1000 people, where the stage (risers) would be located, where our four huge banners would be hung within the rooms.

The AV guys were there to learn how many microphones would be needed and when, where the back-lit, 14-foot rear projection screens would go. What kind of dressing (pipes and drapes) would be required to create the impression of a stage with back curtains. What lighting would be needed—spots on the presenter and possibly on others sharing the stage with the presenter.

I could not help but imagine this stark unadorned cavern of a room being divided in half with one side containing a huge stage and seating for 100s of warm bodies with expectant expressions. The other half converted into a large hall with exhibit stands lining all four walls with signs, equipment, lights, and people chattering in the language of technical commerce: bandwidth, interface, signal integrity, gigabytes, megahertz, etc.

And everywhere there would be people all engaged in earnest conversation. Familiar faces recognizing one another and catching up on the last time they ran into one another. “Whatever happened to what’s-his-name?….” Most will have a cup of coffee in one hand and a cheese Danish or some such in the other, conversing between bites of Danish and sips of coffee. Somewhere in the conference room near the speaker podium, the individual in tailored suit and conservative tie, looking a bit uneasy as he chats with another well-dressed individual, is getting warmed up for taking the stage first.

Somewhere else in the area, our guys are running around trying to find a power strip for the exhibitor who forgot to bring one of their own. Another of our guys is trying to estimate the size of the crowd so that hotel staff will set the right number of tables and have the correct number of requested meals at lunch. Another of our guys is in conversation with a young man without a business card who wants to register for the event, claiming that he’s with someone else who is registered. And someone else is frantically trying to find me to make a last minute change to the presentations that are all loaded on a computer ready to roll through the day, 30 minutes at a go, stopping only for 10 minute breaks and a mid-day meal. And the show must go on, without interruption.

Our gathering is at a nexus where if we were a brain, there would be large numbers of neurons all firing at one time. Here in this theater a succession of presenters will cram days' worth of information into eight hours. In the process, the audience will be taken out of their day-to-day routine in which everyone falls into a pattern of thinking and problem solving. This gathering is meant to completely disrupt that routine and force everyone in attendance to open up to new ideas and to consider alternative ways of examining and solving problems.

And just as with a muscle that is suddenly vigorously exercised, the mind likewise will be force to accept more information in a short period of time than it is used to handling. Ideally, the result is new insight. For those putting on the event, the outcome is far more commercial. And it’s the same as when a major brand name company produces a happening: everyone in attendance is subjected to hours of branding by the sponsor(s) producing the experience.

And when it’s over and the last glass of wine and beer is consumed at the close of the evening reception, everyone leaves and begins looking forward to the next time. Always leave wanting more. You know they’ll come back as they continue to do.

Tuesday November 2, 2004 – Origins of Political Belief

Tuesday November 2, 2004 – Origins of Political Belief

My daughter M and her husband G are dyed in the wool democrats, while my daughter R and her husband T are committed republicans. M and G live in Northern California and R and T are Orange County, California residents. We’re one of those families that debate political points of view openly without provoking an annoying domestic disturbance 911 call placed by a concerned neighbor. How did these two children of mine born a bit over three years apart come to adopt entirely opposite political views.

Both grew up in the same household where we discussed politics at election time. My wife “I” is an unrepentant independent—born in Scotland of staunch labor party supporters. The family knew their political party bosses, contributed to the party election fund, and volunteered in getting out the vote and local neighborhood campaigning at election time. My family was for most of my upbringing staunch southern democrats. My earliest recollection was a heated discussion on the eve of the Dewey-Truman election of how Truman was going to win the election despite doubts expressed by radio commentators and political pundits. I turned out like my wife “I” a rabid independent that anguishes over every political vote.

Why then did both our daughters form strong political views that aligned them each with a distinct political persuasion? They certainly did not get it from either of their parents. “I” and I treated political education in the same way we treated religious education with both daughters. Since "I" and I both grew up catholic we felt compelled to ensure that both daughters were given a clean start in life. Thus, both were baptized to rid them of the original sin we’re all born with. I know what you’re thinking. Rational independent minded, free thinkers like us still hedging our bets about the religious thing. Let me tell you, when you’re told at five years old that you have come into the world with a sin on your soul that will prevent you from going to heaven, it leaves an indelible mark on your conscience, no matter how much scientific rationalism you’re taught in your later years. There remains that residue of doubt that no good parent wanting the best for their kids can ignore.

But, beyond the ritual of baptism, neither M nor R spent much time in church and what religious education they received occurred as part of their secular education. Both chose of their own volition to receive communion when they were in college. Now that both have two children of their own they have chosen as we did to have their children baptized but have not subjected them to the regimen of religious instruction.

I went off on this religious tangent to illustrate a point. Both daughters followed our example when it came to religion. Why then did each form strong polar opposite political beliefs. Now, I know what you’re going to say. They got it from their experience in school. I would tend to agree with you but both daughters attended the same schools and in many instances had the same teachers. Their grade school, their middle school, and their high school were located in Northern California. There was one slight difference in their early years and later schooling years.

M, who was born right outside of Washington DC in Maryland, began attending a Montessori preschool in Plano, just north of Dallas—she’s the democrat remember. R, who was born in Richardson, just north of Dallas and South of Plano, attended a Montessori preschool in San Jose before entering grade school. Later, after high school, M chose to attend the University of California at Irvine. On the other hand R, began her studies at the University of California at Santa Cruz—remember she’s the republican—transferring to UCI in her sophomore year. There was one event that might have had and otherworldly influence on R, which could have influenced her political thinking if you believe in otherworldly suasion: she was attending UC Santa Cruz during the Loma Preita earthquake. And it was after the earthquake that she decided to transfer to UCI. Cosmic connection?

The fact that both daughters attended UCI would have suggested that both would have adopted a republican point of view, but that was not the case. M lived for a time in the OC before and after getting married. Even then, she was manifesting signs of a staunch belief in the democratic faith before moving back to Northern California. R, too, remained in the OC after graduation and. though not with the same fervor, she was showing definite signs of republican devotion. And these building beliefs were beginning to provide some lively conversations during family gatherings.

As both daughters married and the get-togethers included husbands, the political discussions were a source of comic relief as each took turns poking fun at the opposing political points of view. With the current presidential contest, the political fervor from both daughters, though still tolerant of one another's point of view, has become more polarized.

Since my daughters became political active, I have made a policy of never divulging whom I voted for not even to my wife “I”, who will explain her political choice when asked by a family member or close friend. (She, however, will refuse to comment to telephone surveyors or exit pollsters. So please no calls.) My daughters and wife chide me on my secrecy. The reality is my choice will have little bearing on either of their points of view but whom I chose might make one feel less than the other and I would hate for that to happen.

Happy Election Day and may the best man win.