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In with the Old...  (12/29/00)
The black funk railway pulled into my station last week and doesn’t seem ready to leave any time soon. Christmas 2000 was the unhappiest I have ever known, and my mood slid downhill from there. Yesterday I tried to write myself out of it, ticklin’ the ivories, hoping to generate some sort of positive alternatives on the screen before me. Alas. This morning, Linda asked if I’d been successful. I allowed as how I hadn’t.

Bits & Pieces  (12/28/00)
The local fishwrap that would pretend — in vain — to be a newspaper had bottomed out again. Why, you might ask, if I complain so incessantly about this birdcage liner do I read it? And the answer, to be blunt, is that Linda checks the obituaries to see if any of her deadbeat clients has checked out. The other day, above an old story about the right to sell Nazi memorabilia on the Internet, they carried the following headline: Yahoo! fights for Reich to sell.

Zero Tolerance, Times Seven  (12/27/00)
Our system of putting people to death would be ridiculous on its face if it weren’t so tragically mired in failure. Not only do we kill the wrong people, but it takes more than ten years of appeals at a cost of over a million dollars to get the job done, right or wrong. How ironic, when the crime for which they should lose their lives was likely committed in a matter of minutes for a handful of change.

Happy Boxing Day  (12/26/00)
In the United States, it is frequently the day that the megastores announce whether or not they made their Christmas sales projections, or if they got their ears boxed, as apparently happened this year. Seems as though despite a full weekend of shopping on the day before Christmas — which should normally augur well — that folks didn’t and the tills clanged less enthusiastically than the prayerful retailers would have liked.

Behind the Headlines  (12/25/00)
Ya gotta think Fox or MSNBC or one of those other clutzy networks was the dominant news outlet back some two thousand years ago when this whole Christmas thing started, considering how much they left out. And it was only after a diligent if remarkably boring researcher screened all of the old tapes that some of the unreported if interesting facts about the story actually came to light.

Don't Get This  (12/22/00)
Now we are alone together, and knocking on death’s door, asking for asylum. I would just like to note that until I was struck down in the prime of life, I thought I was doing quite well, getting exercise and sleep in appropriate measure, drinking lots of orange juice, and humbly feeling somewhat holier than the rest. I don’t like going out much in public, especially in crowds of hoi polloi; I’m not confident that They are taking care of themselves properly. Plus they all insist on breathing.

Winners & Losers  (12/21/00)
I was on AOL and it said there was a poll about the Supreme Court vote. I clicked in and then where it asked if I thought the Supremes did themselves ill, I clicked yes. But rather than registering my vote, I got a screen that said my computer wasn’t accepting cookies. And, it said, it wouldn’t accept my vote unless I accepted its cookie. Kinda sums it up, doesn’t it?

Freezing in the Dark  (12/20/00)
The larger questions — which generally are not asked during times of actual crisis — are why wasn’t this problem foretold to people who would have to do something about it, and who is pocketing the tens of billions of dollars in ridiculous and somehow-unpredicted skyrockets? Or as Deep Throat told the Watergate sleuths, "Follow the money." At the end of the Gray-ing rainbow, you’ll find people who could have prevented the problem, people who were also major political campaign contributors, sitting atop a fetid mountain of greed.

Reflections of the Garden Isle   (12/19/00)
The greatest treasure of our trip was Naui, who ran the Shirt Shack. She is one of those wingless-type angels who show up every now and then on your path -- if you’re being particularly good. An extraordinary being who radiates such joy and purpose as to take your breath away, Naui is from the "mysterious" island, and she produced the leis made from the special shells. Being the only people in the shop, the three of us walked and talked through the aisles and across the racks of clothes, connecting in an unusually strong, warm, and rich fashion.

Bits & Pieces   (12/18/00)
The people who make things out of plastic continue their proselytizing on the radio about how indispensable plastic is and it’s used in everything and where would we be without it. As if people really needed to hear it. I mean, you don’t find a lot of people saying they won’t buy anything because it’s made of or wrapped in plastic. They wouldn’t be buying anything at all since plastic is ubiquitous. So why spend the money on the announcements?

Schlock for the Flock   (12/15/00)
Of course, there’s a temptation to buy this over-priced trash as a joke, but you really shouldn’t encourage them. You don’t want to hurt their feelings, or interrupt them as they separate the mindless from their money. Kinda like the home shopping networks, which priced their omnium-gatherum so high that they were forced to announce every now and then something to the effect that no one with a double-digit IQ would pay this much. Which is only a step above sending money to televangelists. The fleecing of the flock, as it were.

Supreme Disappointment  (12/14/00)
The eminent Constitutional scholar Ron Rotunda notes that right outside the nation’s capital, in Alexandria County, Virginia, they have a voting system that actually works, coming up with the same count every time. It’s a little more expensive, but it prevents mistakes like voting for two candidates. One wonders if the reason we don’t spend enough to make the process idiot-proof is because those in charge want to filter out that segment of the population that screws up their ballots. One wag says it’s pretty obvious to him that Democrats are dumber and thus have more of their ballots tossed. Isn’t that what Gore was effectively saying happened in Florida?

[Transcript Released]  (12/13/00)
     "Hi, this is Sandra O’Connor. I’m here with Justice Kennedy, and we were wondering if you have a minute to talk?"
     "Most certainly," Sri Naim said humbly. "I guess I don’t have to ask what’s on your minds."

Five from the Orphans' Closet   (12/12/00)
The lawyer for The Wooden One was traipsing through the Florida court system and was no doubt a very tired boy when the photographer caught him with his mouth agape in extremis. The picture made front pages and newcasts all across the country, and probably dropped Gore’s support numbers by five points. And it called to mind the on-point observation by Rebecca West a number of years ago, when the British writer said, "There is no wider gulf in the universe than yawns between those on the hither and thither side of vital experience."

Sloppy But Sound   (12/11/00)
The issue boils down to this: if all of the ballots are properly counted — that is, if the intentions of the voters of the machine-rejected ballots are fairly assessed — then we should wind up with accurate results. Where the local election officials are in dispute over a particular ballot, they can hand it along to a judge. There are not that many in dispute to make the task impossible, but there are more than enough to raise vital questions about a process that functionally excludes tens of thousands of ballots cast on site.

Proper Homage   (12/8/00)
The Navy knew of the vulnerability of Pearl, but chose to ignore it. Years earlier, one of their own staged a mock attack against the ships in the harbor and the planes on the field. It also took place early on a Sunday morning. Of course, the officer who created the demonstration suffered injury to his career, and we lost 2400 men, five battleships, and 200 planes when the Japanese did attack.

Winter Blossoms  (12/7/00)
December descends on the northern end of the Sacramento Valley in its own way on its own time. This year, there are still many trees full of brightly-colored leaves, while others have lost all of their foliage to the winds and rain. But you know that the first fingers of winter have already taken hold in the chill air and the retreating sunshine. While there are still some days when it’s comfortable to ply the daily constitutional in shirt sleeves, the shirt is flannel.

The Math Myth  (12/6/00)
Finally in the nature of numbers, there was the story of a woman in Florida claiming that the stress of the erstwhile vote count had sent her to the emergency room not once but twice. Considering that there was less than nothing — null, zero, nada, zip — that this woman could have done about the situation, ya gotta think that one trip to the hospital should have been enough.

Family Values   (12/5/00)
Compassionate non-conservatives — otherwise known as do-gooders — devote most of their waking hours to providing for the hungry, homeless, ailing, looney, and otherwise needy. Meanwhile, people who don’t get their share accuse everyone else of being racist, sexist, ageist, or otherwise discriminatory. And those with slim hopes counsel us to be more tolerant? Tolerant? How remarkably condescending!

Scraps  (12/4/00)
I would probably also be breathless if I watched "Titans", a prime-time paean to erectile flaccidity. Promoted as "power, passion and dysfunction", this show’s gotta have all the take-away value of cotton candy in a hurricane. It’s all about sex-’n-violence, only some of it is so absurd that you can’t take it seriously. Of course, the questions arises, limply, what can you take seriously on television, and the answer has to be very little.

Courting Disaster   (12/3/00)
Wouldn’t it have been grand to hear a wise voice declare that the fundamental right to vote will always surpass any issue of how that ballot is cast? How extraordinary it would have been for one of the black-robed nine to speak to the need of the American people to come together, instead of be further pulled apart? Someone to observe that neither candidate had shown himself worthy of being president and that the American people were essentially split on which might do less damage.

Stone Soup  (12/1/00)
I infer that the younger years were not a complete failure, though miscues that result in total public humiliation are, at any age, better left forgotten. The unmitigated disasters of later years stay with me, in case my humility quotient ever drops too low, though as the years pass, they tend not to poke so deeply into the semi-flated ego.

Items   (11/30/00)
Now on the one hand you might feel like saying, Toss him in the pokey and lose the key. But when you think about it, what difference does it make to the rest of us that he is taking these drugs, in the privacy of his own room, other than it is against the law, and it’s a waste of some considerable acting talent, as well as of a human being?

Hunker in the Bunker   (11/29/00)
It’s hard to say whose visage would be more difficult to take for four years. The pasty pedantry of Gore would have done wonders for the bulimic community. While the smarmy smirking Bush should close the knees of every mother’s daughter. No wonder neither of them was a clear winner. Few of those who cast ballots did so for their candidate, but mostly in opposition to the opposition.

It's Not about Hate   (11/28/00)
My sister Jennifer wonders that I hate Bill Clinton. I don’t. I don’t hate anyone. There are some fellow human beings like Billy Jeff who have squandered enormous opportunity; people like Slick Willie who have trashed a trust; unformed youth like the Boy from Hope who for his own mixed up reasons has played The Great Wastrel through decades of power. I don’t hate him; I rue the loss of what might have been.

The Madding Crowd   (11/27/00)
Perhaps for the act of kindness on my part, the universe showed its glory by placing me behind only one other person at Manhattan Bagel, where I’d gone to secure a freezerly supply of sesame bagels for my darling wife. And, are you ready for this, the woman who was in front of me asked me to go to the head of the line, so to speak, because she was still deciding. I graciously accepted, and minutes later found myself on the road home. In light traffic.

Life as a Metaphor   (11/24/00)
One of the ironies of exploring the metaphors of life is that most become clear without effort. In fact, the more one demands clarity, the more difficult it often is to see the truth. It’s kinda like being able to see better out of the corner of your eye at night. The other alternative is to wait for the meaning to make itself apparent, usually with in a bolt out of the blue. Say goodnight, brain.

Why's and Who-For's  (11/23/00)  Happy Thanksgiving
I believe that there is a larger reality that oversees our lives. When we are on the path, we encounter very few bumps. When we are headed in a wrong direction, we run into obstacles that tend to move us back to where we are supposed to go. A plane might be delayed, a phone call missed, or we might get ill and not be able to make a meeting. There are also those occasions when we are ready to move to another level and we get positive input, often from a guide.

Bits & Pieces  (11/22/00)
CNN, which surely must stand CrapNotNews, insists on reading on the air viewer comments posted on their websites. Usually there’s one from each of the Gore and Bush camps — their version of balance — but their selections seem to require neither intellect or even facts. Worse, they are hyping a poll which informs us that 40% of the Bush supporters won’t accept Al Gore if he’s anointed our next president. Right, and what are they gonna do? Join the Montana mutant militia?

Book 'em, Dummo  (11/21/00)
I was brought up in a large house which center of activity — other than the kitchen — was the library. It was where my mother wrote and my father read and the children were tolerated if they were quiet, which wasn’t much fun for the children, but it was a big house so we could find entertainment elsewhere. And it wasn’t in front of the television set, which we had at sufferance for major world events, and not for numbing the cranium.

Crayfish Conspiracy  (11/20/00)
The truth is that the networks were not in conspiracy, except that they are mostly cut from the same capitalist cloth. They wanted to be first. They got some misreported numbers which they, ergo, interpreted incorrectly, and bang-zoom, Lil Al was gonna be prexy-next. The greater concern that The Gumbo Brain was never likely to grok — and wouldn’t want to if he could — is that the people who control the network newscasts aren’t concerned with such trivialities of choosing who will be in the White House; it doesn’t matter to them. They are in charge at a higher level.

Off the Clock  (11/17/00)
Vacations are about much more than taking a break from work, or not having to go to the office. For us, they are an opportunity to explore other parts of the planet — see new vistas, learn about different cultures, enjoy new tastes, smells and sounds. And to have the time to discover new places inside.

Media Culpa  (11/15/00)
The reason why we are in this muddle — and that’s truly all this is — is that the news media have failed to do their job. For more than twenty years, they have spoon-fed us sizzle when we needed steak, and their reporting and our listening have badly corrupted the system. The now-seasoned practices of the networks and their lessers have delivered to us the deplorable choice of Bush-Lite versus The Wooden One. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could throw them all out and start over with intelligent leaders and quality journalists?

Amazing Gr-r-race  (11/13/00)
It says a lot about how our nation got into this mess that Warren Christopher and James Baker are shilling for the two candidates; they have dominated U.S. policy for decades, which explains why so many of our decisions have been counter-productive and destructive. Now they are diddling the election, representing The Wooden One and Bush-Lite, two lightweights who can’t stand on their own.

In Memory of the Fallen and Useful Heroes  (11/11/00)
"It’s good news week, someone dropped a bomb somewhere contaminating atmosphere, and blackening the sky." Remember that wonderfully upbeat song from the Sixties. Probably not the kind of thang to be thinking about on Veteran’s Day. After all, this is when we remember our fallen heroes, those who gave their lives -- their last full measure of devotion, Lincoln called it — in the name of their country. Curious thing is happening. As we continue to plow through new decades of what becomes history, the number of our number who have actually fought in a war is rapidly dwindling.

Pyrrhus in Palm Beach  (11/9-10/00)
The Boy from Hope is getting evicted on January 20^th, and the question on a lot of minds is who’s going to replace him. The answer should be obvious, but let’s take the matter through its paces. First of all, making the presumption that final electoral election result will be decided in Florida — an iffy but not unreasonable presumption as of Thursday evening — then the question is, what is going to be the final count.

In Our Dreams  (11/8/00)
George Bush and Al Gore walk out onto the stage and stand together before the podium. They take turns reading the following statement: We stand before you today, humbled by our failure to convince you of the soundness of our individual candidacies — our visions and our characters. Clearly, with such division over where America should be headed, we -- your chosen candidates -- must now work to better meet the needs of our constituency, the people of the United State of America.

They're Talking to Me?  (11/7/00)
People selling broadcast time talk about viewership in the thousands and millions, but they mostly are counting eyes or ears and dividing by two. The quality of the attention — especially to the commercials — has got to be viewed at best in a slanty-eyed fashion. For example, who doesn’t wait for a commercial to go to the kitchen for a new beer or the john to get rid of the old one.

Hold Yer Nose and Vote  (11/6/00)
I had approached the presidential race thinking that Gore would be way ahead here in California, and that I could vote for Nader, whose politics are more aligned with mine than are any of the other candidates. Not that I like Nader; his public persona is unnecessarily anti-social. He’s a policy wonk who apparently lacks any real personality, at least one that is conducive to good politicking, and, should he be successful, management. For after all, that’s what the presidency is about isn’t it? The chief executive of the free world.

Bits & Pieces   (11/3/00)
Someone has figured out a way to capitalize on PMS. The trick was to call it something else, but treat it with essentially the same ingredients. The new name is PMDD, which stands for pre-menstrual dysphoric disorder. If you look up dysphoric, you’ll find it defined in my dictionary as "An emotional state characterized by anxiety, depression, and restlessness." Bang-zoom, we have a winner.

Countdown to Oops   (11/2/00)
We have a choice between a wussy, emasculated intellectual and a folksy, low-brow distillate. Yes, the Supreme Court nominees the next guy will make are important, and if you want clean air to breath, you’re likely to be better off with Gore’s "enhancements" than Bush-Lite’s stumbledom. Can you really vote for a man who’s inevitable response is that while he is admittedly clueless hisself, he will surely be surrounded by some of his father’s top advisers. It’s a grand idea to have a kitchen cabinet, but we should elect someone who at least knows how to cook.

More Time to Read  (11/1/00)
Plunked down in front of a computer screen for most of the day reading and writing, I look forward to something else at the end of the day. Regrettably, there’s next to nothing on the idiot box, so I often wind up either back here ticklin’ the ivories, or watching something unworthy of my attentions. But over the past coupla months, I’ve read some of the latest work of my three favorite authors. Kurt Vonnegut’s "Timequake", Robert A. Johnson’s "Balancing Heaven and Earth", and Robertson Davies’ "Happy Alchemy".

The Method in the Madness - II   (10/31/00)
Theresa made some prescient comments about the ballot measure and the people of her county. She clearly enjoyed living in Susanville, and was delighted that evening to watch her community learning about an important next step in self-determination of their future. An interesting place, where half the population are incarcerated felons. And yet, it still attracts a lot of clear-thinking, progressives souls who understand that it’s always a good thing to take a close look at change.

The Method in the Madness   (10/30/00)
The next day found me in Susanville, a two-hour drive east and south of Mount Lassen. Situated in the California high desert on the Nevada border about an hour north of Reno, the city of 17,500 is ranch and range land, mostly known for its two prisons, whose inmates comprise half the population. The economy is better than it was — all boats rise on the tide — but it was hard-scrabble for a lot of people, and not easy for most. The Dyer Mountain Project would be great for this area, infusing badly-needed dollars that could build and supply schools, repave roads, and create hundreds of jobs, including many career-track opportunities.

It's Still the Economy, Stupid   (10/27/00)
There’s a school of thought that what most decides elections — especially for President — is financial affairs -- from the national debt to the wallet in my pocket. The latter being the most important, of course, but even when we aren’t doing great, we know we’re probably better off than if the economy was headed south. One of the big questions on a lotta folks’ minds is what happens when the unprecedented expansion meets the precedented decline.

The Affair of International Politics   (10/26/00)
What’s in it for Clinton to put out the word that he’s available to step in? As comedian Richard Jeni described squabbles such as is the Middle East -- or Yugoslavia, Northern Ireland, Ethiopia, Kashmir... -- it’s that they’re "basically killing each other to see who's got the better imaginary friend." And if he’s right, there is no end in sight to the killing short of the arrival of Buddha brandishing weapons of mass destruction.

Bits & Pieces   (10/25/00)
In lawyerese, the 43-year-old woman claimed not only physical injury, but "highly unpleasant mental reactions including fright, horror, disappointment, chagrin, worry, disgrace, embarrassment, indignity, ridicule, grief, shame, humiliation, anger, and outrage." The county prosecutor said it was "unlikely" that he would investigate, adding, "that’s not the silliest thing I’ve heard this year, but it’s definitely in the top 10."

Two Weeks and Counting   (10/24/00)
What’s more interesting than the prexy run is the possibility that one or both houses of Congress could shift from the elephant to the donkey column. And of course, there are the local ballot measures, which mean much more to people than who lives in the White House and controls the House and Senate. In California, we have a half-dozen statewide propositions that range from campaign spending limits to school vouchers to what we do with first-time drug offenders. Most of it is pure horse-hockey, written one way and presented another; all the result of the failure of the legislature and the governor to get anything done properly.

Deported from Childhood   (10/23/00)
It’s in the fall that my mind will travel back now 35 years to that gray Sunday afternoon when my parents drove me up to Exeter. I was enrolled as a beginning sophomore at the nation’s finest prep school. Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire, and Phillips Andover, thirty miles to the south in Andover, Massachusetts, were founded by the Phillips brothers back in the late eighteenth century. And for hundreds of years now they have been turning out the finest-educated boys in America. Girls, too; Exeter went co-ed shortly after I left, though it wasn’t cause-and-effect.

Flying Thang   (10/20/00)
This flying thang is a significant part of my life. It was one thing to take on such a large learning project just shy of fifty years old, but it was bigger than that. There was the matter of climbing into the sky on the bet that a 160-horsepower engine in a twenty-year old plane would carry me safely on my journey wherever. A lot of people don't consider that a safe — or even sane wager. Indeed, an associate whom we refer to as General Grant, is forever repeating a line from my "From the Ground Up" radio series "...you can't pull over to the side of the road at 5,000 feet." Love the kid.

Phoning Miz Daisy   (10/19/00)
The drums are beating ever louder for a ban on the use of hand-held phones while driving. Deluged with myriad complaints about people driving badly while talking into their hands, political bandwagon standers at the state and local level are pushing legislation which would dare to say no to the tens of millions of people who aren’t about to allow such legislation to pass. Given their druthers and a modicum of political wherewithal sharing the hall with the promoters of the ban.

Showing Petty Coats   (10/18/00)
While it’s true that celebrity requires some concessions from privacy, the fact is that there are some people who choose to live their lives in public. They are the fodder of the paparazzi and the media gossips, and the amount of air time or ink they earn can determine the direction and height of their careers. Over the past twenty years, as the sizzle has over-eaten the steak, we have also witnessed the public rise of people who are little more than the product of a publicity machine; Rula Lenska, for example, or the Spice Girls.

The AIDS Scamdal   (10/17/00)
In a little noticed article published recently, medical researchers have discovered that certain people with AIDS who stop taking their medicine didn’t die. Now this is a curious thing, considering that for most of the past 17 years, AIDS was said to be an implacable death sentence. Oprah, the fount of all that is earthly, announced in the late Eighties that it was predicted that one in five people would die of AIDS. Didn’t quite turn out that way.

Alive and Better   (10/16/00)
Way back when I was in college, some thirty years ago, it was a tumultuous time. The Vietnam war was reaching its peak, the Dark Side had taken over the White House in the person of Richard Milhouse Nixon, women were proving they were equal by burning brassieres, and coloreds, I mean, Negroes, I mean, blacks were proving they were equal by celebrating their differences.

Columbus' Search  (10/13/00)
Columbus Day came and went amidst some demonstrations by people who are angry at the Italian navigator more than five centuries later. Mostly it’s the Indians who complain that he treated their forebears badly. Seems like quite a grudge to hold, considering how long ago this happened, and how slaughtering and enslaving people seemed to be de rigueur in those good old globe-sailing days. I really think it’s time to stop carping about ole Chris, and just be moderately grateful that he stumbled across our hemisphere.

The Greater Lacking  (10/12/00)
If the problem is as deeply ingrained in Gore that he can’t overcome it, well, oops. I mean, maybe he generates the posture out of fear -- it does have a slightly hysterical flavor about it -- which would maybe be a bit more understandable, but hardly exculpatory. It’s not the kind of comportment one would present deliberately during intense negotiations. And in a larger sense, if Gore is not able to modify this behavior, what does that say about his ability to govern?

Bits & Pieces  (10/11/00)
Someone who could have truly used some hep the other days was Rick Ankiel of the St. Louis Cardinals who threw himself into the record book with five wild pitches in a single inning. It was the worst such crime in 110 years, which is so long ago that the big time was called the Players League and there was a team from Buffalo. The Cardinals still managed to win the game.

The Circles Games  (10/10/00)
PS: NBC scored again in the negative column by first refusing to carry the first presidential debate. The public opprobrium induced the peacock to then offer both the debate and a baseball game to its affiliates. Well, folks, the debates, cleaned up in the ratings, and NBC came in behind the trashy WB network. Another reason not to buy anything made by General Electric.

You Weren't Joking?  (10/9/00)
More typical is the Department of Agriculture, which is asking Congress for a supplemental appropriations of $100,000,000. What for, you ask? Why to see if they can track down some $5,000,000,000 that has been looted from the department. Everyone who thinks the extra appropriation would even pay for itself, just give us a call to Titanic Cruise Lines.

Serbia Changes Hands  (10/6/00)
Our own much-heralded American Revolution had the support of only 20% of the colonists. They had quite a burden to carry, not only against the British, but to brave the doubters and the nay-sayers among their neighbors. Many lost their belongings, their families, and their lives. The opposition in Yugoslavia has suffered atrocities of their own; opposition was little tolerated under Milosovic. And many Serbs with too little power watched the horror their country caused — in their name, by their own soldiers — in the slaughter of innocent people in Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo.

What Was that Smell? Duh Bait  (10/5/00)
They rarely answered Lehrer’s questions, and he failed to push them. Instead, they recited what their handlers had massaged into them, and it looked it. At one point, Gore started a sentence, then restarted himself, and shifted into a pre-recorded mode. Bush was clearly stretched to his limits, unable to both remember his lines AND maintain a leader-like expression. It didn’t help that the microphones were wrong for the event, picking up extraneous sounds that detracted from the presentation.

Four-Square  (10/4/00)
Restricting the flow of federal monies for crime control and other endeavors supported by Washington, they can pretty much twist the arms of the state. It is the fear of the feds that has most doctors with their panties in a bunch. If they had the courage of their convictions — if they remembered Hippocrates over hypocrisy — they would be treating their patients properly, and marijuana would be administered for a wide range of physical and emotional conditions that are not as well managed by alternatives.

Avoiding the Truth  (10/3/00)
This issue rears anew its ugly head from a report on a survey of those who would call them journalists. Probably scribes and regurgitators would be more accurate. Or perhaps shills. A third of those reportorial quacks admitted that they avoided stories that would negatively affect their corporate owners. That is, they skipped stories that might lower the value of their company’s stock, or lower advertising revenues.

No Will, No Way   (10/2/00)
The Los Angeles public schools were supposed to get rid of social promotion. They announced a plan to do so, but then scaled it back to a few grades, then two. Now, in a decision made last spring that was never made public, they have decided that even two would be too ambitious. They are going to start with one grade, and they’re going to raise their promotion standards down the road. Instead of holding back 90,000 students, they will only hold back about 6,000, and even that number is expected to slip.

Error Message   (9/29/00)
For instance, broadcasters could clear a few hours on the Sunday before the election, and again the night before, to provide time for a statement by the candidates and their answers to several appropriate questions from the local anchor. That way, the candidate could make his case, and the questions could illuminate areas of reasonable doubt. Maybe the NFL should agree to schedule no games that weekend to nudge the broadcasters toward their obligation.

Mah Dawg Can Purr  (9/28/00)
Buster was eleven on my fiftieth birthday, which in dog years means he’ll be about 77. So he’s getting on in years, and it is easier to contemplate my own demise than his so I don’t. And he certainly isn’t anywhere near the end of his string. In fact, that old saw about how you can’t teach old dogs new tricks...pshaw. Buster is still learning. I just taught him to offer me his paw when I say the word to him. Okay, he does so a bit reluctantly. Maybe he even raises his eyebrows, or lowers them, in his canine expression of patience, but he gives me his paw willingly.

Nader at Any Speed  (9/27/00)
Though I've mostly always voted Democratic, and I'm working for the election of a Republican to the U.S. Senate, I'm pretty well decided that I will vote for Ralph Nader for president. The condition is if Gore is locked in a tight race with Bush for California's electoral votes, I will vote for Gore. But if Gore remains well ahead, or things flip and Bush-Lite is so far out in front of The Wooden One that my vote won't prevent his victory, I’ll vote for Nader.

Raison d'Etre   (9/26/00)
Bright green grass is pushing its way up through the colorless stalks of what bloomed last spring. The two-and-a-half inches of rain we had on the first is having its effect, albeit somewhat prematurely, according to the calendar. Or so we might opine, when we forget about the timelessness of the system in which we find ourselves. Nature is an amazing mother.

Going for the Gulled   (9/25/00)
Our society is far too oversold on the narrow gauge of winning and losing, mostly as a result of television, which also seeds us with the belief that life is transient. If you don’t like the way things are going, change channels or tune in next week. That’s probably a fair call for most of the viewers and inevitably, the athletes, but it’s going to take more than that to rid the world of people like those who wielded absolute power on Biography.

Bits & Pieces   (9/22/00)
If you haven’t gotten over the Ellen-Ann separation, you’re gonna be devastated by the news that Melissa and Cyndy are disengaging. Oh, yes, they surely still love each other, and that sort of thing, but the living arrangement is changing. The girls have two children, and will certainly continue to have their best interests at heart. The father of the two children — we call him a daddy-donor — is David Crosby of all people. Now as much as I like his music, wasn’t he known to have significant problems with drugs and alcohol; so much so that he was on the edge with liver damage. Which raises the question of what criteria would you use in determining a test tube dad for your young ‘uns?

In the Nough   (9/21/00)
For each of us, the knowledge we require is different. But if you need direction, consider the dictum of Russian anarchist Prince Alexei Kropotkin who offered, "What kind of world do you want to live and work in? What do you need to know to build this world? Demand that your teachers teach you that."

Bush Bumbling   (9/20/00)
There’s gotta be some kind of conspiracy against George Junior, at least he’s gotta think so. The poor fellow can’t get a break anywhere. Every new strategy meets with a new defeat. I don’t blame him for casting his net ever wider, what with the election looking like it’s running ever faster away from him. Polls show him falling double-digits behind The Wooden One in places like Michigan and Pennsylvania. Colorado, normally a Republican state, is moving into the Dem column, and Florida, where Brother Jeb is governor, is also climbing aboard the donkey.

Curious and Curiouser   (9/19/00)
Another curiosity is that so many Americans decide to invest a coupla of years or their whole lives to helping poor people in foreign lands. Not to disparage the needs of the foreign impoverished — they comprise a whole Third World of their own, after — but what is the necessity for travel if you want to help those less fortunate? Why do these angels of goodness not find work in the South Bronx or South Central Los Angeles?

New Wheels   (9/18/00)
When I sold cars, SUVs were not yet de rigueur, but even then, 95% of the people who bought four-wheel drive vehicles never used more than two wheels. Maybe they saw pictures of themselves rock-climbing in the Tetons or fording rivers in the Amazon, but the shots were never developed. Today, with Lincoln and Mercedes tantalizing the over-funded under-mentalized with their own versions of Silly-Urban-Vanity models, ya gotta wonder if anyone out there is buying a car — or truck — for other than transportation.

My Pal Robert   (9/15/00)
I don’t have the slightest indication that an all-powerful god would hoist Christianity as his exclusive banner. What about all of those Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, and flower children? I would think that a really world-class deity would follow the religion on the bumpersticker that reminds the truly conscious that god is big enough for all religions. That he would love all god’s chilluns, even if they didn’t all believe in him.

The Shame of Injustice   (9/14/00)
Surprise, surprise -- nothing ever materialized, and for a while now have come a spate of stories about the government’s case unraveling. On Sunday, it was reported that the government had agreed to release Lee the next day if he would plead guilty to a single count of downloading secret files in an unsecured area of Los Alamos. An unsecured area in Los Alamos? Are they kidding? The place leaks like an upside down sieve.

Madness at the Edge of Town   (9/13/00)
Thousands of really stupid people are out a ton of money. They were invited to send $100 bills wrapped in foil to people they’d never met in hopes of garnering a windfall. They fell for the wind. The scam was allegedly organized by a man named Hood, if you can believe it, and netted in the neighborhood of $20 million. There’s something Darwinian about fleecing the brain dead.

Morality and Government   (9/12/00)
Unless it comes to telling women they don’t have a choice. Or figuring out some way to prevent people of the same sex from enjoying each other in the privacy of their own homes. They would also urge the school board toss out trash like "Huckleberry Finn" and any other books that might stimulate a child to think for hisself. It’s that stimulation part that’s most dangerous, you know.

The Journey   (9/11/00)
Oh what a journey. Fifty circuits ‘round the sun, spinning a thousand miles every day, and then all of that flying and driving and walking. Using grossly wild generalizations and a sputtering calculator, I figure I’ve logged 14-1/2 billion miles so far. My goodness, how far, I’ve come, while so often feeling stuck. And how far there is to go. Sometimes I wonder about the future; what it is, when it will come.

Ink-Stained Wretches   (9/8/00)
"Newspapering used to be an art," Yo observed recently. "Yes, you covered the news, but you also got a chance to write thoughtfully, to create images in peoples minds, images that readers would carry with them to the next issue. Today, in our drive-thru culture," he says, "most local newspapers are just fast food, and not very nutritious."

Politics Be Local   (9/7/00)
Most people don’t pay attention to — let alone care about — what happens in Washington, even. They don’t think it matters. That they pay attention. Otherwise they might care. But they think that government is controlled by special interests, and who could argue with them. Caring without the possibility of effecting change is pointless.

Going Postal   (9/6/00)
Point two, why bother with a study. Anyone paying attention would see how the national attention catches on any obvious snag and holds on, very briefly, before finding another ride. We love violence, especially slaughter of innocents, probably because it imbues us with a sense of well-being that we weren’t among them. The capricious nature of lunatics with guns is that when it’s your time, you’re there; even when it doesn’t make sense.

Rain, Rain Don't Go Away   (9/5/00)
The flowers all perked up with the promise of cooler temperatures and the impending winter allocation of two-and-a-half feet of rain. But this fluke — El Nino, La Nina, Da Ninny — doesn’t put the locals off their guard. Still two more months of fire season, and temperatures are forecast to climb back another forty degrees by week’s end. We can always use more rain.

Items   (9/4/00)
If Philadelphia won’t work, there are alternatives. Scientists have discovered new planets circling HD83443. That’s in the Vela constellation, which is out past Texas about 141 light years. Now in case your junior high astronomy week is only a foggy memory, in human terms that means it would take the Concorde flying at Mach One over 111,000,000 years to get there, or roughly a hundred times longer than man has walked the Earth. No word on Clintonian ambassadorships for the new planets.

So It Goes   (9/1/00)
There must be a purpose to the 15 billion years of evolution that has us sharing the only planet in the universe known to have life. I mean, what a coincidence, and secondly, what are we to do with this fact. Have you figured out why you're here? What is your role? Do you feel a sense of participation, of obligation, of importance?

Individual Family Lives   (8/31/00)
For some reason, I knew when Linda handed to me the phone, that this was what my father was calling about. It was a medical condition that was likely not fatal. So when he finished talking, I didn’t seem adequately concerned, I fear. The fact was that I wasn’t. Concerned, that is. I didn’t know as much about the disease as did my father or sister or brother-in-law, but I knew enough to know that I didn’t have to worry.

Government Pruning   (8/30/00)
It’s bad enough that we get things wrong and it costs billions of dollars, and sometimes peoples’ lives, but to make obvious mistakes in the face of the most urgent of warnings borders on demonic. Like the federal forestry officials who against every reason possible lit a fire that burned up a billion of our tax dollars, and destroyed or disrupted thousands of lives. What ever happened to the notion of public service as in service?

Bits & Pieces   (8/29/00)
Give credit where it’s due. Pat Buchanan backed another winner. Consider this first sentence in a recent news article: Ezola Foster, Pat Buchanan's running mate on the Reform Party ticket, collected workers' compensation payments for nearly a year for a mental disorder she now says she did not have. Clearly, Foster’s past is checkered past, and perhaps she was chosen because she makes Buchanan look good, no easy task.

Survive vs. Thrive   (8/28/00)
Ostensibly, the program was to be about surviving on a deserted jungle island. But quickly it turned out that the primary tool was deceit, with manipulation and stupidity close behind. And the program celebrated it. Call me picky, but I would like to see shows that wallow in the sordid aspects of human nature fail. Instead, tens of millions of people tuned in.

Had by Sex   (8/25/00)
Another problem with the term is that it’s not really accurately descriptive. I mean, do you have sex, or does sex have you? And not just in the sense of your mother having you; another good illustration of a verb lacking full meaning. I meant how a body is taken over by the feelings; that up to and through the moment of ecstasy, there is little going on between the ears, thinking-wise.

Not Even Talking the Talk   (8/24/00)
A real leader would put away some of the issues that we’ve been arguing about ceaselessly and which arguments keep us from stepping up to new and larger issues that are lurking ominously ahead. For instance, the problems of over-population, nuclear waste disposal, and a flood-tide of ill-equipped children.

Fair-Sharing the Costs   (8/23/00)
Let’s say that everyone who receives health and/or life insurance has to pay extra if they are going to cost more, either in health care, early retirement, and early death benefits paid. It’s only fair. Just look around at your co-workers. The smokers, the couch potatoes, the heavy drinkers, the just plain heavy — they all need to take better care of themselves, because you — the healthy, vibrant, fit ones — are paying out of your own pockets the higher costs of the slovenly.

And the Point?   (8/22/00)
They’re gonna start playing movie previews on ATM screens at certain banks. Now you know that brainstorm must have had some logic behind it, though it was probably kinda flimsy. My guess is that some bank was paying some marketing VP much too much money and he had to justify his existence. ‘Cause I mean really, who in the right minds — enough said — would spend time at an ATM for any reason other than to do their banking business and leave quickly. Since ATM machines, even in nice neighborhoods, attract people who are looking for people with cash. And even if it was a nice big screen, don’t most people have better things to do with their lives than watch movie clips outside their bank.

Early Money Is on Gore   (8/21/00)
Gore didn’t seem to know how to work with the audience response. He would insist on finishing a sentence, even when the place had already erupted in applause. It looked and sounded odd, as though he — or the audience — were missing cues. He should have stopped, and waited until the applause began to die before either continuing the sentence or going on to the next. He didn’t seem to know where to break, his words or his thoughts.

Catching On   (8/18/00)
It has been something of a marvel to me in recent years that my physical coordination has gotten significantly better. This change was first noticed in my early forties, about the time that the rest of my physical plant seemed to edge toward the other side of the ledger. In particular I would notice that if I dropped something with my right hand, I had a chance of catching it with my left. If my foot caught a root, I wasn’t likely to go sprawling, or even to lose my balance.

Environmental Roulette   (8/17/00)
To read this nonsensical obfuscation in the paper -- often spewed by experts -- or to listen to the mindless bombast on the radio, one would think there will never be consequences to our consuming and burning and dumping. Hey, yo-yo, do the math. The atmosphere is finite. So are the oceans. At some point, we shift the balance. At some point, we destroy their capacities to filter out our trash and toxins. And we’re talking about the air we’re supposed to breath and the water we need to drink and grow crops.

Men with Power Tools   (8/16/00)
Ya gotta wonder why a 49-year-old man wouldn’t have the sense -- if he has to make sparks -- then to soak the ground around him and not start fires. Linda says because they put his name in the paper, it means that the authorities are going to go after this man for some of the expense of this accident that didn’t need to happen. Only one home was destroyed and no one seriously injured, but it could have been a disaster. The winds were unusually calm, but still the flames jumped several roads. And committing firefighting equipment and personnel to avoidable fires is especially risky this time of year.

Bits & Pieces   (8/15/00)
The National Academy of Sciences says there are over a hundred sites where nuclear materials were processed, which haven’t been made safe enough for unrestricted use for lack of money, technical skill or the political will to do the job. They call these irretrievable areas National Sacrifice Zones. Somehow that doesn’t seem enough.

Hypocritic Conventions   (8/14/00)
Loretta decided to throw a bash, a fundraiser to benefit Hispanic politicians for all who wanted to invest tons of money in them. Great idea. And hold it at the Playboy mansion. Bad idea. At least according to party officials. They didn’t want to be associated with the Playboy image. Uh-huh, like it was enough that Bill Clinton was going to be at the convention. They told Sanchez to move her party.

Choosing Your Crowd   (8/11/00)
Regrettably, we have too long been inculcated with a predilection to rely on our physical senses. The fact is that if we used our intuition, we would make better choices on who should be in our circles or not and every time. Intuition, the sixth sense, is an energy field that sparks awareness in advance of deliberate attention. Intuition is pure, fact-based. Unfortunately, intuition can be, and often is, deliberately mis-interpreted by wishful thinking or fearfulness.

It's Not about Killing  (8/10/00)
Most who scream against choice, while wrapped in weepy piety over the killing, are usually also people who support capital punishment. And the vast majority of them are also remarkably uptight about human sexuality. Truth be told, if they didn’t believe that the need for most abortions was created by rampant sex, they would be much less concerned. The proof is in the fact that most abortion protestors also oppose teaching human sexuality in the schools. And you can bet dollars to diaphragms that they’re not going to discuss this kind of thing in their home.

The Crest Crust  (8/9/00)
So why, pray tell, do the Cadillac radio ads feature comments about cornering ability on mountain roads? Why do they trumpet a super-powerful Northstar 600Mghz engine, which even if it is any good is never gonna be used safely? Why would one commercial suggest that Cadillac owners crank up their radio and drive around the neighborhood showing off their car? The folks driving Cadillacs don’t drive that way. People who drive that way don’t drive Cadillacs.

Jewish Spotlights   (8/8/00)
There’s a certain degree of irony in the pairing of two headlines yesterday morning. The Wooden One has picked Joseph Lieberman to run with him, and an ultra-conservative rabbi claims the victims of the Holocaust were all sinners. Last week at the GOP convention it was Hispanics, and now we’ll have a session with the Jews. But as usual, unfortunately, there will be lots of smoke and heat, but very little light.

Items   (8/7/00)
Linda is disconsolate that the Taco Bell Chihuahua has been relieved of his icon duties. Not that she ever goes to the place, but she must see enough television to have developed an appreciation for the Mexi-mation character. I told her I suspected that the reason the dog had been dumped was because too many people were making an association in their minds between the Chihuahua and the food. As in, where do you suppose they found this greasy brown stuff?

Bits & Pieces   (8/4/00)
The only reason why there are so many cable and satellite channels is because the distributors can find sponsors for the programming. You can find gun and sporting goods manufacturers to subsidize outdoors shows, and food processors to put their names next to cooking shows, but where ya gonna find someone who could cash in on the Shakespeare channel? Coming, Bacon for the soul not the griddle.

Keystone Spies   (8/3/00)
It turns out the wife of Wen Ho Lee, arrested ages ago and charged with providing Los Alamos secrets to the Chinese was providing information to the CIA. Miz Lee was a secretary at the nuclear lab at the time. It would probably take years to unknot all the years of secrecy and lies; who knew what, when, and who’d they tell. Who cares? Poor Wen Ho should be let out of jail, since he probably was guilty of little more than contributing to the confusion. Unless, of course, they can tie in their colleagues in failure who started the fire. Hey, maybe the fire was a cover-up.

No, You're Not Weird   (8/2/00)
No further word about the young man, but the woman faces up to four years in prison. As for her education, the college, citing privacy policy, won’t say whether the woman was disciplined, only that she is not currently enrolled. Now call me too fast on the pointing finger, but doesn’t anyone else think that maybe we’re gettin’ a tad loosy-goosy about how students are required to behave at public institutions? Let alone that some obvious lunatic is out in the community after stabbing someone for no apparent reason, other than the confrontation with an ugly if obvious truth.

Lack of Conventional Wisdom   (8/1/00)
The truth is that the conventions make lousy programming. That’s because the Democratic and Republican party hierarchies are a bunch of incompetently self-aggrandizing pimps who are more concerned with their image in the mirror than what the rest of us see. Which means that their conventions have all of the aesthetics of narcissistic donkeys and elephants. Maybe that’s how the dinosaurs got extinct.

Word-a-Day   (7/31/00)
In my email every day I find a new word from word-a-day, with pronunciation and definition. Over the past six months I’ve plucked a few words from the emails and stuck ‘em in a file. Today, when I saw what I had collected, I realized — Ah-hah — I should write a piece on the new vocabulary of American politics. The words are costive, kakistocracy, nosocomial, Cimmerian, rhadamanthine, bibliolater, and cerulean. They were all new to me, which embarrassingly reveals my limited vocabulary, and if you stick with me, you will not have to suffer my shame.

Shhhhh   (7/28/00)
I go on to proselytize about family values like honesty, grace, dignity, humility, compassion, wit, intellect, and quality. But I’ve probably gone to far. How ‘bout just some basic respect for other people? And we could start by lowering the general level of the conversation. Because we are in danger of drowning out the good stuff with the merely mundane and otherwise irrelevant, because the latter is louder.

Another Duck in the Row   (7/27/00)
For years it was my dream to make enough money to live on the coast near Mendocino. This town of about a thousand is pretty far away from almost everywhere, if not by actual miles then by the twisting roads it takes to drive there. Which was fine with me, being something of an anti-social sort of fellow who loves the Pacific Ocean. But in the back of my mind was that I could always learn how to fly; they have a considerable air strip a few miles outside of town.

Another Airless Election Wallow?   (7/26/00)
The real problem with the Cheney choice is that he represents the antithesis of fresh thinking that has been awol from the Bush campaign. Einstein said in 1946, with the discovery of the atom bomb — the antithesis of life — that everything had change except for our way of thinking. Apparently, the experts believe that we should only see candidates who keep their brains in a small box, play the same tunes, and suck the same toes.

Lord of the Fleas   (7/25/00)
Shall we all hold hands and pretend that the "Lord of the Flies" is not about to be coronated the standard bearer of the Reform Party? Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau has taken off the gloves and is all but calling Pat Buchanan and his supporters Nazis. That might be generous of him. The former Nixon speechwriter and perennial candidate of self-promotion, together with his odious sister Bay, are sinking their egotistical fangs into the demented carrion of what was once Ross Perot.

Bits & Pieces   (7/24/00)
I happened to catch a coupla minutes of Ricki Lake while in a motel last week. She was on television. She had a white couple a black woman and another white guy on the set. The couple had been married twenty years, and from the look of things, it hadn’t all been a walk in the park. The black woman said she wanted to have sex with the husband on a regular basis but that was the extent of what she was looking for in a relationship. The wife didn’t think that would work.

Bush at the Plate   (7/21/00)
Bush needs virtually every Republican voter if he is to have a serious chance of winning in November. That ain’t likely to happen, since Republicans are essentially divided into two camps — those who still have their marbles, and those who view Pat Buchanan with respect. The line between the two is heavily drawn along the abortion issue; those who believe a woman has a right to choose, and those who call the other side murderers, just for having the view.

Clueless in Redding  (7/20/00)
Watching the local news by satellite from New York and Los Angeles, one understands why the smaller market efforts are so bad. Listening to the network radio newscasts from ABC and CNN, provides an equally dismaying example. Cheap, tawdry, prurient, and irrelevant. No wonder people haven’t a clue about what’s going on in the world. Even if you watched, or listened to or read every available organ, you’d still have to search to find real news.

Been Down So Long It Looks Like Down To Me  (7/19/00)
I'm in a quandary; perhaps a defining point in my life. It comes, as these moments do, when I have just taken a breath. I have reached some sort of plateau. Life seems to be working. And then crash. Most recently, it was a shift in my professional situation. What was high-flying suddenly hit some turbulence, and the new direction is not yet clear. I felt like the roadrunner character who had been run so fast he ran over the edge of the cliff. And then he looked down into the abyss.

[I looked through previously written but unpublished SetonnoteS and discovered a plethora that were in danger of being dated. Here are eight of them.]

Crime and Punishment  (7/19b/00)
Speaking of crime and punishment, a local woman has had her bail reduced from a million dollars to a half. She allegedly — and I use that word caustically, since a whole slew of people saw her do it — shot her daughter-in-law twice. At a wake. The day after the woman married her son. Apparently, and obviously, unhappy about the nuptials, mama fired two bullets at close range into her head. The new daughter-in-law apparently didn’t come up to her standards, having had more than one skirmish herself with the law.

Hand in Hand  (7/19c/00)
Maybe to you who have found the perfect partner this might not seem like a big deal, but lemme tell ya folks, it’s not always you find someone who is so downright supportive in your endeavors. Linda has been that way since we met. She actually believes that I am an intelligent person with good ideas and that they’re worth pursuing. This is not a blind endorsement. Linda knows me very well. She understands my thinking and asks the right questions. She recognizes the strengths as well as the weak spots, but she sees the latter as challenges to overcome as opposed to excuses to withhold her support.

Wriiiiiipp  (7/19d/00)
Wrriiiiiipp...The Nature Conservancy wants my money, and they’re asking for it with some free return address labels that feature a depiction of a brand-new black-crowned night heron chick "with a face so ugly only her mother could think she’s adorable." Ugly it is, and why they would think I would want to put ugly on my envelopes is beyond me. I understand protecting wildlife, but next time, please accentuate the positive.

Get Us Together  (7/19e/00)
While all this noise in Dade County was capturing the headlines, the Supreme Court was making some real news. They said Nebraska shouldn’t ban third trimester abortions, and they said that states could, in fact, limit anti-choice protestors in their exuberance at medical facilities. That’s two for the good guys. The Supremes also said that the Boy Scouts could refuse to allow openly homosexual men to be scout leaders. There are and will be plenty of homosexual scout masters, but perhaps this ruling will induce fewer to discuss their private lives.

Rite-ous Anger  (7/19f/00)
I don’t like that kind of raw anger, even acted, which is why I don’t watch much television. I am concerned that people who expose themselves to that kind of violence become numb to it. That’s probably what enables borderline psychotics to step over the line and start shooting people. With all of the murders and beatings that people see on television and in video games, it’s not hard to imagine them becoming inured to some shades of reality.

For Appearance's Sake  (7/19g/00)
One encouraging note is that the process of gaining this awareness has not been as tormentful as the last time. There was no plummeting into fury or wrenching anguish. Because I at least found the right woman in Linda, and I have created a patch of blue in the sky that can never be taken away. We sowed it up there together. And part of that union has been an expanding awareness that we are on the right track.

Nuclear Nihilism  (7/19h/00)
I’m not used to agreeing with Bush, simply because he’s such a policy twit on almost every issue, but here he’s right, and Gore is dangerously, obscenely wrong. I mean, Bush said he wanted to keep enough nukes to protect our sacred shores, so it’s not like we’re putting our nation at risk. And consider that for decades we kept adding needlessly to the pile of warheads to ridiculously vast levels of overkill; all the extra nukes would do, it was said, is bounce the rubble.

A Wealth of Taxes  (7/19i/00)
I’m all for being able to earn as much money as you could want and spending it without too many restrictions. But I wonder about ridiculously wealthy people leaving everything to the children. If there is no restriction on how much can be left, doesn’t it threaten to create a society with a top tier of dynastic idiocy. Like the inbreeding of royal families, we will have a sky-box culture of wealth without purpose or value. Just imagine our society dominated by thousands of Donald Trumps, Ted Kennedys, and Roxanne Pulitzers.

Shame on US   (7/18/00)
We as a nation suffer this egregious opprobrium because of the actions of our leaders. Clinton at the top as the decision maker, and his foreign policy hatchet, Madeleine Albright. Albright who has failed in every mission, then as Ambassador to the United Nations and subsequently and today as Secretary of State, is giving Henry Kissinger competition as one of our all-time killers.

Watching versus Creating   (7/17/00)
I take the optimistic track that most people are using their cable to get on line rather than watching the idiot fare on television, which gets worse by the moment. Like the myriad competing cardboard quarter-forms. One commercial starts. "Everybody’s collecting coins. Collecting coins. Everybody’s collecting coins." You can tell the level of viewer they’re trying to reach with such hypnotic prose. And we’re talking about a piece of cardboard with prices ranging from $4.99 to $19.95 for just the basic models.

"Hit-to-Kill"   (7/14/00)
It’s abundantly clear that the only people who will ever benefit from Star Wars are Boeing and Raytheon, and their subcontractors. Their scam artists have stroked the appropriate missile heads in the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill, and now the money is just pouring in. Some $30-$60 billion has been allocated — so far — for this pie in the sky plan that doesn’t make sense to anyone. Well, except to the folks who get the filthy lucre coming and going.

Pope-A-Dope (with all due respect)   (7/13/00)
I think the Vatican was totally out of line, however, for working all week long to get it canceled; bravo to the Rome authorities for preserving the separation of church and state, to the extent that it is over there. If the Catholic church remembered its spiritual roots, it would embrace all chilluns. It’s overt hostility towards homosexuals may find inference in their bible, but it is antithetical to the true Christ consciousness of loving even the sinners.

Poor Bryant Dumbel   (7/12/00)
The American Family Association, which is another one of those financial spittoons for people who need to pay others to worry for them, was seeking an apology from Dumbel for profaning their idiot. At first, Knight and his tarnished armor wanted him fired, but backed off of that request. I mean, imagine you’re the AFA taking to CBS to court; in effect you’re taunting them to prove that you’re an idiot.

No More War   (7/11/00)
Now check me out on this one...The Northern Ireland Protestants are having their violent ways with the troops there because they were told they would not be allowed to march through a Catholic section. The question is, if they had been allowed to march through and the Catholics hadn’t responded badly like getting into fights, what then would the Protestants have demanded? I mean, isn’t this gig something to the effect of, How far can we rub your noses in it? And who says when enough is enough, if enough isn’t enough right now?

Amy Is Free   (7/10/00)
Amy had been jailed under the Draconian drug-hysteria laws passed by the politically-cowed Congresses in the Eighties. Her husband had been arrested for trying to sell a drug called Ecstacy which he had manufactured before it had been made illegal. Amy transferred funds from one account to another for his bail. The government went after her, charging her thus with conspiracy. Her husband got four years, but thanks to an over-zealous prosecution, an inept defense, and plenty of lying in between, Amy was sentenced to 24 years.

Message Problems   (7/7/00)
Now being a weekend iconoclast, I tend to like maverick theories, but I can’t imagine any of these yahoos having enough imagination to let it run wild. We’re talking about a fossil discovered in 1969 that was left in a desk drawer for years. So I gotta ask, not who cares, but why should a normal person. I’m all for knowledge, but folks it doesn’t make a whit’s worth of difference in today’s world. And when you consider what could be done with the billions squandered on looking at fossilized lizards, the mindlessness of their work in a society that needs real solutions to contemporary problems hurts.

Poverty of Consciousness   (7/6/00)
The management was white. Most of the better jobs were given first to whites and secondly to Indians. Blacks were third on the list and the Mexicans were last. The management, as described in the article, were brutal in an almost Dickensian way, and none of the workers -- regardless of race, seemed to be treated as human beings. Still, they were paid eight to twelve dollars an hour, which is a lot of money for the area, though the work was terrible and hard. Few reading this would have lasted an hour on the assembly lines.

Independence & Community   (7/5/00)
In his classic work, de Tocqueville said, "Nothing struck me more forcibly than the general equality of conditions....All classes meet continually and no haughtiness at all results from the differences in social position. Everyone shakes hands." But with incredible perspicacity, he also observed that while the American passion for equality "tends to elevate the humble to the rank of the great...there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level, and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom."

The Hearts of the Matter   (Independence Day 2000)
A funny thing happened in the middle of the last hearts game...but I get ahead of myself. I have been playing hearts — the card game, with real cards — for forty years. No, I’m not addicted; I learned to play on rainy days at the beach. And it’s a fun if not terribly challenging game; not like bridge or poker, certainly. When it came out on the computer, I found an old companion. Not a constant kind, but one to check in with, to get away for a moment from the grind, to think about nothing. Indeed, hearts is kinda like television you’re only really half-watching; it’s mind candy.

The Congressional Grind   (7/3/2000)
They say two things you don’t want to see manufactured are sausage and legislation. Thursday night, and into the wee Washington hours, I watched our House of Representatives enact legislation that would allow doctors to bargain with those who sign their paycheck — HMOs and the insurance industry. Probably the most significant health care legislation in more than thirty years, the measure is a major step toward wresting control of the nation’s health from the hands of corporate beancounters.

Fit to a T  (6/30/2000)
It astounds me how easily people buy into imagery. Consider how many cops wear mirror sunglasses over expressionless faces parsed by a mustache. But I’m thinking of the GP — the general public — and how quickly and easily they are induced to swallow bait and hook, line and reel, to buy this or that to make them look like their idea of something suave and debonair, pronounced swayve and duh-BONE-r.

The Right to Be Fat   (6/29/2000)
I don’t deny anyone the right to be fat. Some of my dearest friends are in the red zone on their scales. But I think it’s mindlessly outrageous to suggest that they are fine. They are not. It is unhealthy to carry lots of extra-weight. It kills over 300,000 Americans every year. Someone said about another minority, I don’t think they should be denied the rights we all have, but don’t ask me to call them normal.

It's a Crime  (6/28/2000)
All sorts of jumping up and down about the DEA trying to track computerists who visited sites about marijuana. The DEA’s outreach program left "cookies", or markers, on peoples’ computers. Actually, in the DEA’s case, they probably left brownies, ho, ho ho. But it does sound a lot like Big Brother, doesn’t it? A lot of people are up in arms about this invasion of privacy. If they only knew...?

Hill-Bill-ary  (6/27/2000)
It’s funny to think of it but Hillary’s ole man is the one who gets into all of the trouble, and she’s the one who walks behind and cleans up after the donkey. In a celebration of humility, when they first got to Washington, Billy Jeff appointed the Foist Lady in charge of medical industry reform; she blew it big time, letting her ego dictate a disastrous protocol. Then down the road when her husband was accused of philandering, Hillary shrilled about a "right wing conspiracy" when she certainly knew better.

Leap of Faith  (6/26/2000)
I’ve been dealing with a paradox regarding my path in life. Nothing big, of course; just looking at the twists and turns. And thinking that when I get to wherever I’m going after this life, if I wind up meeting a fellow with a long white beard who appears to be in charge, I’m gonna suggest that he might figure out a better way to run things down (?) here.

Capital Idea  (6/23/2000)
I say lock ‘em up in a small cell, alone, provide basic sustenance, no entertainment or visitors. At least until you get their attention. Then they might be given the option of being used for medical experiments or to clean up toxic waste sites. People who act in a depraved way against others shouldn’t get a short cut from their guilt, whether they feel it or not; they should be around to suffer at least the knowledge of the suffering that they have caused.

Fertility Rights   (6/22/2000)
The other evening after work, as Buster and I ambled up the fire trail that zig-zags up the hill to our house, I realized that soon they would come to spray away all the vegetation on the path so that it was a safe exit, should we ever need to escape a firestorm. It’s easy to forget how dry this will all become, tinder for lightning, in just a few months. But right now, the bright green carpet of grass and startling palette of hues flush the fears from my mind. The glory of it all is empirical proof to me of a larger reality.

Items in the News  (6/21/2000)
A deputy sheriff a coupla counties to the south is in a whole heap o’ trouble. Seems this fellow had sexual relations with a 17-year-old girl who was riding in his patrol car as part of a school sponsored ride-along program. That makes it statutory rape, regardless of consent. The problems don’t stop there; the girl was the daughter of another officer. Where do they dream up this stuff?

The Evil of Two Lessers  (6/20/2000)
So let’s say that the economy continues to zoom along at least until November, which is what the prevailing wisdom suggests, then there is basically only one question asked and answered that will mean anything in the voting booth. And ironically, it was Ronald Reagan’s challenge to voters in ‘84, when he asked them, Are you not better off today than you were a year ago. Which is a good question in our society, especially if the predictable answer is yes, because we have short memories and shorter attention spans.

Various Miscellany  (6/19/2000)
Tell me again how come they don’t have to pay taxes, for the roads that lead up to their churches, and for the fire and police protection that they get. Personally, I think that truly spiritual people can worship to their mind’s content, by themselves or with others, but the site doesn’t have to be tax-exempt. Churches are little more than duty-swaddled god-bothering boxes and they don’t deserve any special dispensation.

Getting Away with Murder  (6/16/2000)
Mark Twain is said to have said that If you want to see the dregs of society, go down to the local jail and watch the changing of the guard. Of course there are good jailors, and the exceptions know themselves. But there is a large culture of people in this profession who are drawn to it for the wrong reasons. And then they steep and stew in a climate of hatred, fear, brutality, violence and deceit; and some of it rubs off. In both directions.

When Virtue Is the Patient  (6/15/2000)
Speaking of wasted money, how ‘bout all those hundreds of billions of dollars that are squandered on military research. Indeed, 40% of all research in this country is done for the Five-Sided Funny Farm and its pals in paranoia propagation. Oh sure, there are some actually beneficial products that come out of trying to build better killing devices, but imagine all that might be accomplished if our initial goal was something peaceful. Solar cells, solid waste disposal solutions, nuclear detoxification....

Lost Alamos  (6/14/2000)  ** Flag Day **
** Flag Day **
Good riddance to that seemingly endless supply of federal dole-suckers. Send the dolts and malingers back to the real world where they have to compete on the basis of merit. Let us instead hire intelligent people who appreciate their chance to make government work, and who are willing to hold their jobs on the basis of superior performance. What a concept.

Observations on the Maddening Crowd  (6/13/2000)
The monks in Sri Lanka better reread their mission statement. The Buddhist clergy, long influential in politics in what was once Ceylon and peaceful, have urged the government to forget negotiating with the Tamil Tiger rebels, and recommend instead that the revolt be crushed with military force.

Week Connections  (6/12/2000)
Unfortunately, it was Common Cause that didn’t get it quite right. The money was actually given to Gray’s inaugural committee, which required different reporting. Gray’s people filled out the right forms, but the Indians hadn’t. Gray’s mouthpiece went ballistic, ripping Common Cause up one side and down the other. As well they deserved for getting it wrong. But the bottom line is the bottom line; the Indians gave money to Gray, and he’s taking very good care of them in return.

Miasma by the Bay  (6/9/2000)
Ole Jer proposed that Oakland be the site for the state's first college preparatory charter school run by the military; it would have students in uniform, at reveille every morning, and provide a framework of discipline and learning that has been disastrously absent for a large segment of the Oakland population for decades. Brown’s proposal made a lot of sense, and even common sense would recognize that almost anything in the current mire was worth a try.

Ever the Twain You Shall Meet  (6/8/2000)
Every time I hear of a school board banning Mark Twain because he used the word nigger in Huck Finn, I bemoan the stupidity of those who forced the virtual book burning, and the great loss for the children, many of whom will probably never learn the greatness of the mind of the man who was arguably America’s greatest and most important writer. Yes, read Huck Finn to your children.

Who Knows What Happened to TWA 800?  (6/7/2000)
From the initial interviews of witnesses, there seems to be reason to believe that there was, in fact, a missile that brought the plane down. Why would someone do such a thing? It would be easier and more hopeful to think that it was an accident. If the missile had been fired as part of a military exercise, could such an act be covered up, and if so for how long? Could it have been some yahoo militia type who got a hold of a Stinger, was playing around with it, and pushed the wrong button?

All the News that's Fit to Pimp  (6/6/2000)
It's too bad that the Times has gone to seed. Again. The country could certainly use a news source we could trust. Indeed a news source that could set high standards again. They would have to rise above the easy route of he said-she said "ping-pong" coverage and bring about a return of true journalism, the kind that moves a society forward.

Items in the News  (6/5/2000)
When I was growing up, one of the popular professions was law enforcement. Myriad young boys, and some girls, wanted to follow Joe Friday into the LAPD or Lou Erskine into the FBI. Not anymore. Whether it be corruption or brutality scandals or too much television -- not to mention the ugliness and frustration of the work -- the number of applicants is declining rapidly. Seven years ago in Chicago, there were 25,000 applicants taking the entrance exam. This year, there were 1,500. We need new heroes.

North Valley Mercury  (6/2/2000)
This is the land of scorpions and rattlesnakes, where man was not meant to live without air-conditioning and at least one very good reason. For example, traffic or relative lack thereof, the concomitant slower pace than you’d find in a place like Sacramento or the Bay Area, and the natural beauty of the mountains and the lakes. On a clear day, Mount Lassen’s volcanic cone and Mount Shasta’s welcoming if imperious facade, along with the Trinities to the west, declare certain boundaries to all but the intrepid.

Life in Hand  (6/1/2000)
His humor, gently self-deprecating, ranged across the familiar targets of his peers, from acne to school to dreams. He implied that he had some of his own dreams, but never let on what they might be. He would laugh at lot, squinting narrowly over chubby cheeks and bouncing jowls, and few of his friends even wondered -- let alone asked him -- what he wanted to be when he grew up. None probably thought of him in the long term.

Say Again, Please  (5/31/2000)
The problem is that I sometimes don’t find a steady enough surface on which to posterize or the road demands my attention or the momentum of a hillside is pulling me against my own inclination. Later, to my great frustration, I will come upon what I know were worthy thoughts but which have been camouflaged to no purpose in a doctor’s scrawl. That is, I can’t read my own writing.

In Memory of the Fallen Useful and Heroes  (5/30/2000)
My father is at the end of his mid-Seventies; he was in the Second World War, the last good war. I was born five years after the war ended. A student at Harvard, my father enlisted and was sent to Europe as a cryptographer. He and a bunch of other eggheads were given the job of monitoring and interpreting German radio traffic. They were useful but not heroic. Once when the fighting got particularly close, their captain told them, Men, if the enemy gets too close, I’m going to have to kill you. His men took turns staying awake in case the enemy got too close and they’d have to shoot the captain.

Disabled by Words  (5/29/2000)
The county fair decided that they were no longer going to have a special day for special people. That is, their program of providing everything free for the developmentally- disabled of the community was going to change. Instead of just letting them all in for free on one day, the fair would instead distribute 900 passes to the social services agencies to hand out to the needy. The banner headline across the top of page one announced that the disabled had been "dumped". The article below it filled in the story, but not all that many people up here bother reading beyond the headlines; it would interfere with their opinions.

Fish and Go Fishing  (5/26/2000)
Personally, I wouldn’t put my dog at risk like that. If he’s not good enough to ride up front, maybe he shouldn’t come. And no, I’m not talking about driving short distances relatively slowly on your own property. Mostly what you do on your own property should be your own business, so long as you don’t disturb the neighbors, foul the environment, or otherwise put others at risk. But such authority requires responsibility, and I’m afraid that a lotta folks who are excessively vocal about their rights short-change the responsibility end of their stick.

Bits & Pieces  (5/25/2000)
Has anyone seen one of the new gold dollars? I haven’t. I heard that there was a shortage and you could only get them at Wal-Mart, and if that’s the choice I’ll wait. What confounds me is the ad on television the other night from the U.S. Mint telling people about the new coins. Driving up demand is a grand idea, but supplying that demand is even better.

Abuse of Justice  (5/24/2000)
Clint Eastwood is being sued by a woman who says she couldn’t find a handicapped-access restroom at his Mission Ranch. Clint bought Mission Ranch for more than it was worth to protect the surrounding wetlands. Then he put a chunk of money into renovating it. He also added the appropriate handicapped access even before the law required it.

So Don't Make Mistakes  (5/23/2000)
Consider the firefighters who put their lives on the line. The nearly five hundred families burned out. The lives of so many people changed so dramatically, mostly for the worse, forever. Because a bunch of people at the federal agency had the authority to play arsonist fire ranger. It is the obstinate stupidity, the exercise of arbitrary power against common sense, and the fact that they are our employees that makes this such a socially venal act.

New York Deserves Better  (5/22/2000)
Rudy could have taken Hillary in a New York Minute had he just behaved himself and kept his mouth shut. He’s done a good job, in most eyes, of making it a livable city again. For liberals, that’s a euphemism for clearing the streets of beggars and petty criminals. Which is not a bad thing, especially if protection of the downtrodden pushed the boundaries of decency past common sense. Which is why a lot of decent folks thought he was doing a good job.

P.W.T.T.  (5/19/2000)
We live out in the wilds, about 12 miles from the city of Redding. For the first coupla miles of our road, the houses are large and sitting on tended-to property. But as you drive out further, the homes are trailers, and the yards are littered with metal hulks that have rusted beyond recognizable shape. Our house sits at the end of a half-mile packed dirt road; it is the only house on the road. There are three other developed sites, each with one or more trailers. Most are more or less permanently situated, with stairs, porches, and neat skirting. Our neighbor’s yard is always immaculate.

Such Is Life  (5/18/2000)
The energy that measured the final heart beat was the life force of the person who used to be alive. It was the same energy that kept his heart beating all of his life, until just now. The energy that pumped blood through his veins, kept his lungs breathing, provided feeling in his fingers, smelled and tasted, heard and saw things. When he stubbed his toe, the pain he felt was an energy signal. The life force that left the patient had maintained and operated the physical plant of the human being from beginning to end.

Mosquitos  (5/17/2000)
Up here in Redding, where rattlesnakes and scorpions should be enough to keep people at bay, we have some very nasty insects. They make little or no noise, are hard to nail if you do notice them before they bite, and they leave unpleasant results, either in stings or itches. The mosquitos are particularly noisome. Depending on when come the rains, they can arrive in a swarm thick enough to invite automatic weapons fire.

The Teachers' Pay-Off  (5/16/2000)
Education is probably the critical issue, and we need to shift massive amounts of public funds to educate our sorely-disregarded children. Whether you might argue about their need for education to compete in the global economy, or simply feel that the opening of a mind is the greatest purpose of a human being, education is the key. The money is there, it’s just that we squander unconscionable federal monies on the military, and at the state level, we are building prisons with sociopathic zeal.

Bits & Pieces  (5/15/2000)
Speaking of leaking, three Burger King employees in New York State have lost their jobs because they were urinating on the food they were preparing. And spitting on it. And adding such extras as Easy Off oven cleaner. And for months. Not to worry, nobody was killed, or even injured. Indeed, not a single customer apparently complained. I guess they wanted to have it their way instead of yours.

A New Set of Wheels  (5/12/2000)
I sold cars for a while. Twice, actually, for a few months each time. Though I was very successful at it, I hated it. I realized that the only way to make money was if the customer was either stupid or lazy, and then I had to take advantage of him. I didn’t have the temperament to rip people off, even if it was legal. Indeed in the car business, it’s almost expected. After my first experience, I wrote a book called "Right Car, Right Price", which AutoWeek reviewed as "the right stuff".

Real Pearls  (5/11/2000)
I think that people like to have information. They like to be thought of as smart, usually, or at least in the know with their peer group. Moving up the consciousness ladder, you find people who prize knowledge for its own sake. These are the folks who have broken out of the pack, but it isn’t without cost. As de Tocqueville noted about Americans, "there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level, and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom."

Reality Papered Over  (5/10/2000)
Of course, sometimes there’s nothing the editor can do about a story, even if he’s read it. The participants have just left themselves dangling from their own-built petard. And there’s plenty of that going on around let me tell you. Maybe you would say it’s proportionally the same, it’s just that we’ve got more people making the headlines with their homespun idiocy. But I don’t think so. I think there’s proportionally more idiocy, and you’d have to be an idiot not to agree with me.

Boobs Like Barbie  (5/9/2000)
Surely there are enough competent managers out there who could be hired with less risk to the company. And maybe even last longer and perform better. Or maybe there are just too many companies, too many lousy boards, and two few talented managers. And we’re going into a tailspin that will eventually result in a restructuring of the global economy.

Cuatro de Mayo  (5/8/2000)
It’s not about being old that I feel the difference in our years, but about what happened in those earlier years that is not part of their awareness. I’m gonna be fifty in September, and they are colleagues in their mid-thirties. They were talking about Cinco de Mayo on May 4^th, and I asked them if they knew what happened thirty years earlier. Blank look. Kent State. The eyes narrowed as they recognized the sounds, but they didn’t know what happened there or the historical context that so defined the generation previous to them.

Bits & Pieces  (5/5/2000)
In other punishments, Playboy magazine has reprimanded the chief editor of its Romanian edition. I didn’t even know they had multiple editions, let alone one for Romania. So you’re thinking maybe articles like "Girls of the Coal Mines"? Uh, uh. They featured an essay called "How to Beat Your Wife Without Leaving Traces." It implied that good beatings could lead to great sex. Oh, well then....

An Invitation to Participate  (5/4/2000)
I believe that we are alive and in our bodies for a purpose greater than consuming and polluting. I don’t believe that the person who dies with the fewest toys wins any medals because of it, but I do believe that the life force that created each of us is so extra- ordinary that it could be working without purpose. That each of us must have a reason for being here beyond eating, watching television and later mouldering in the grave.

Steak at Stake  (5/3/2000)
When I see the bumpersticker "I Brake for Animals" I think maybe the owner is a little over-zealous. I mean, who doesn’t break for animals? And does he suppose that he is distinguishing himself from people who deliberately don’t brake for animals, or who deliberately try to run them over? Run ‘em down, I say. No, that’s a joke.

Reputation for Integrity  (5/2/2000)
I never asked Ron to give me an inside scoop. He was a man with such an impeccable aura of integrity that it would shame me to even ask. More importantly, anyway, Ron served to provide perspective for me, and through me for our coverage, of what the laws meant and how various testimony fit into the overall scheme of things. It was not only not a transgression, but it helped elucidate the public on matters of national interest.

Warning to Sensitive Ears  (5/1/2000)
Then I woke up in the middle of the night and I thought of a better motto: Arrive Safely in Comfort On-Time. I faxed the line over, and not hearing anything, presumed it was fine. But then the sales guy called. His boss, the JPR marketing director, was not sure, he said, that the new phrase worked for them. Apparently he thought that "Arrive" was a call to action. I didn’t say it, but I did think, No, you putz, it’s a harmless intransitive verb.

Star Wars -- Not the Movie  (4/28/2000)
The Pentagon is particularly upset because the Congress refuses to close military bases the military says they don’t need. Now when you hear the military asking for base closures, you know that we really, really don’t need these places. They are not cost-efficient. They are draining funds from other, more worthy projects. But, squalls the Representative of the People of the would-be afflicted district, We’re talkin’ jobs, peoples lives, the future of our future. And afflictees band together and block all of the base closures to protect their own.

We'll Call Her Eleanor  (4/27/2000)
She was probably in her early fifties when I knew her, though I was not very good at guessing that sort of thing. She was attractive, and I told her so in a letter that she told me she kept in her safe. It wasn’t a mash note, but a letter of respect and appreciation for both her beauty and her extraordinary presence. She could have knocked weaker-kneed men off their feet, if she had wanted to, although that wasn’t in her nature.

Homo Erectus Set  (4/26/2000)
I wonder if anyone on a religious mission would take time to indulge in a little distraction. I mean, I know that they’ve got to have god in, of, and by their life in every moment, but wouldn’t it be nice to just kick back and watch an old movie on television. For instance, Abbot and Costello were on the other night, in the background as I caught up on the newspapers. It was one of their later films that while still smooth was a bit boilerplate. Still, there was a good line from the villain who said, "I had a fight with my conscience...and won." At least he had a dialectic going.

Guns and Mutter  (4/25/2000)
Though their display of guns inside the house seemed mighty excessive, again, I was in fact relieved that the Feds were able to carry out the mission successfully. I had been concerned that certain parts of our country were no longer under federal jurisdiction. And while it is unfortunate that the people holding the boy wouldn’t obey the legal authorities — let alone do the right thing and send his boy back to his father — at least the Feds were able to go in and do the job.

Redding's Road  (4/24/2000)
Many of our older citizens are just fine, thank you, though they are watching their money carefully, which explains why there are myriad cheap restaurants. Tons of salt and grease. I guess ya gotta envy people who have stopped worrying about nutrition. But sometimes you want someplace special, and that doesn’t mean taking the wife’s Buick through the same ole drive-thru.

Bits & Pieces  (4/21/2000)
Give the ax to The Wooden One. Al Gore has just opened his mouth, and is choking on his foot again. Ole Al says that if he were president, people wouldn’t be allowed to bring handguns into churches. Now see, I didn’t realize that was such a problem. I mean, people who shoot people in church, sure ain’t gonna get dissuaded by such a law.

The American Pedant  (4/20/2000)
Actually, when you boil off the credits and station breaks, it was closer to nine hours; it just seemed longer. Because it’s tough to sum up a coupla centuries of leadership — for better or worse — in nine hours without cutting some corners. The production team — a family of historians named Kunhardt — decided to encapsulate 41 presidencies thematically, rather than linearly. They lumped the leaders into ten different categories that seemed rather arbitrary, and irrelevant.

Scraps to Clutter  (4/19/2000)
I go to Wal-Mart for my plinking ammo; 550 rounds for $8.97. The gun department is on the far side of the store, which means that I have to make my way through a considerable field of fellow Wal-Martians. It’s not a pretty picture. By the time I got to the counter the last time, I decided to buy four instead of my usual two boxes of bullets. The decision was confirmed when a woman with a flock of young ‘uns asked the ammo maven, where she might find water balloons.

More People Get Their News...Without Journalism  (4/18/2000)
A recent flap at the White House illuminates how far ABC News has fallen. ABC News was taping movie star Leonardo DiCaprio walking through the White House, chatting with President Clinton about matters environmental for an Earth Day show. Well, it seems Clinton gave Leonardo a full-fledged 15-minute interview on the subject, and ABC Newsers were outraged.

Econ 101  (4/17/2000)
They call economics the dismal science, but that’s probably because those who studied and taught it didn’t seem like interesting people. Economists tend to live with numbers at the expense of human interaction, or at least that’s often the perception. Which is curious, because I think it was in Bulfinch’s Mythology that I read that the Greeks thought of mathematics as the most romantic of languages.

Stonehenge  (4/14/2000)
Stonehenge is a literally breath-taking experience. One is humbled into silence by the achievement and whatever impelled them to do what they did. You can feel it today. There is such power and presence in the formation of this geologic opera you begin to imagine that maybe these stones cruised in from Wales on a whisper of intention. Or maybe it was aliens.

Summer Rain  (4/13/2000)
A light summer sprinkle is falling on the canvas awning that shades the deck outside my home-office. There had been some spitting earlier in the evening, but you could still watch a haughty four-day moon and a passel of stars over to the west, playing tag with the clouds. Now the whole canvas is dark, as an unforecast front sidles through and the separate raindrops become a patter.

Bits & Pieces  (4/12/2000)
A recent news report said that doctors had determined that riding roller coasters created brain damage. They had to study this? I kinda thought it was obvious. By the physical experience and the people who seemed to like it. You’re flying around at high speeds with a group of people who enjoy terror, screaming, and vomiting. Why wouldn’t think they find a lot of brain damage?

Desperate Game  (4/11/2000)
That’s a lot of money to spend and get such poor returns, especially since the show never had a chance to fly. When you put the pieces together on the basis of consultants and focus groups -- instead of formatting an intelligent, engaging program using intelligent and engaging people -- then you wind up with Barbie-esque fluff, scraping the bottom of the ratings cellar.

Flight to Fancy  (4/10/2000)
Linda is in the air for a vacation in Holland and Belgium. She and another attorney- friend are headed over to visit tulip land. The friend lives across The Bay from San Francisco airport, out of which they departed for Europe this morning, so I flew Linda down last night to Hayward Executive Airport, near to where the friend lives. My co-pilot was a new friend, who was also a client of Linda’s. Bud flew for the commercial airlines for over thirty years, and before that was a pilot for the Navy and landed on aircraft carriers.

Gud Spellur  (4/7/2000)
On a more cosmic level, I find these spelling bees to be just a tad off-line with what they ask the children to spell. Let me say that I always loved spelling bees, but I also was familiar with the words. Even if I didn’t exactly know what they meant, or how to spell them. Nowadays, at least in the competitions I read about, the children are spelling — or not — words that I’ve never heard of, never seen in print, and haven’t a clue what they mean.

Pride Cometh Before the Faint  (4/6/2000)
It was an ugly thing, but somebody had to do it. Mr.Cat had found some shade and ignored me. Buster tried to ignore me, but being a dog he just wasn’t very good at it. Linda was off erranding, so that left it to me. And finally, enough was enough. Fans were on, windows were open, and the sun was heading down toward the western ridge, belatedly, this first day of daylight savings. But it was still too hot to sit at my desk, so I turned on the air conditioner.

More Loose Change  (4/5/2000)
In another example of how the lunatics have taken over the asylum, I'm waiting for someone to explain to me why my mouthwash has a child-proof top. We're not talkin' vanilla extract which teens would swill for its alcohol content, usually suffering a hangover and never getting high. Who needs to be protected from excessive cinnamon breath?

Pride in Right  (4/4/2000)
Local officials in the Miami area say that they won't supply law enforcement to back federal authorities if Elian is sent back to Cuba, and warn of a bloodbath if the feds attempt it. My visceral reaction is to wonder if we have any napalm left, but I'm afraid that would sound a bit harsh. I don't know what the feds are thinking, but how could they not enforce a federal judge’s order? They didn't with George Wallace standing in the schoolhouse door. Do we back off at the threat of trouble?

The Mind of Work and Play  (4/3/2000)
I had forgotten what it was like to work from eight to five, five days a week. I haven't had a job where I had to be in an office every day all day for almost a decade. This is not to say that I don't enjoy working or that I lack the discipline to sit at my desk writing; I love it, feeling ideas alight on my consciousness and then joining the creative process with some deliberate notions. 'Tis the marriage of the conscious and the non-conscious, and probably the very thing that makes us human, and worthy to be the site of such activity.

Lowest Commmon Denominator  (3/31/2000)
Advertising is a curious game, especially since there are such high and low ends to it. From the Neiman-Marcus catalogue, for example, in the upper tier to the spray-on hair products in the lower. It used to be that television was mostly for the low-end products, because that’s where the masses were and they couldn’t afford much and you had to sell a lot of whatevers to make the production — let alone the advertising — worthwhile.

Parking Angel  (3/17/2000)
She’s older, probably mid-sixties. Her appearance is careworn, but without a sense of loss. Her mottled grey hair is pulled back, with more than a few wisps escaping control. She has something of the unrepentant appearance of an aged hippie. This is a woman is not ordinary.

Wretched Flashlight  (3/16/2000)
The local fishwrap that masquerades as a newspaper exists only because it is the only game in town. Not just as the principal news source in the typical vacuum of one paper and weak broadcasting, but as the primary local advertising vehicle. Though some papers take advantage of the situation and produce a quality journalistic effect, the Record Searchlight — otherwise referred to as the Wretched Flashlight, and worse — fails badly as an informational beacon.

Gas Out  (3/15/2000)
Let’s also not forget that gasoline prices are incredibly low still, when you factor in inflation. The fact is that we are getting an incredible deal. After all, we’re talking about a limited commodity. But the petroleum industry has figured out a way of delivering it to us at the same cost or lower for thirty years ago. They simply sell more of it. And folks, that balloon is gonna burst, and sooner than later.

Connect the Dots  (3/14/2000)
One of the Fox networks is trumpeting a new film critic. He’s gonna assemble a panel of experts and they will tell it like it is. The illustrious host assures us that he will not be in anyone’s pocket. Says the cultured one, "And if it sucks, I’ll tell you." With such a gift for gab, you know your gonna be getting the truth, straight from the horse’s...the horse’s....

The Bradley Effort  (3/13/2000)
What Bradley needed to do from the outset was to challenge the nation’s Democrats to take back their party from Clinton. And to entice thinking Republicans who have been disenfranchised from their elephants by the lunatic right. He needed to offer the vision of a new alignment of interests. Not the traditional Democratic party image of a labor-Catholic-liberals coalition. That hasn’t been the case in more than twenty years, though most of the party hierarchy has been in denial about it. Hey, they wanna keep their jobs.

Rainy Day Children  (3/10/2000)
The children stood in the pouring rain without shelter or proper clothing, waiting for the school bus. More than a dozen dotted along a couple miles of rural Bear Mountain Road. They didn’t get suddenly trapped. They were caught in a downpour that had been drenching the area for hours. They had been sent out this way. They were clearly soaked to the skin. What kind of children would be so ill-equipped that in their teens they couldn’t dress themselves properly?

War Today, Gone Tomorrow  (3/9/2000)
War seems to be popping up a lot lately. As in John McCain the war hero. Or Darva Conger the would-be millionaire’s briefest-of-brides who claimed to be a Gulf War veteran. Or the campaign to build a World War Two memorial in Washington. And in all of that talk of things war, there seems no one taking note of the fact that war is waning.

Scraggles  (3/8/2000)
Old Scraggles did manage to get himself more together by the time it was time to move, and I carried him in my car in a box along with three other boxes of our three young female cats. The car got a tad noisy at times, but curiously, it was only when I directed my attention at them in their four boxes that they ever started talking.

Ballot of Reckoning  (3/7/2000)
If the people making the rules are those who profit by them, the game is over. When this happens in business, you wind up with a monopoly, and some people get richer at the expense of others. But when it is the very operating political structure of the government of, by and, for the people, then the stakes are considerably higher.

The Lowdown on a March Sunday  (3/6/2000)
Last week was my first at wo-wo-work in a long time. Got there in the morning and didn’t get home until afternoon. Mostly setting up my office space, kicking the computer like a dead cat until our MIS guy decided it wasn’t the software or the RAM but probably the motherboard and the new machine arrives tomorrow. Yippee.

Bits & Pieces  (3/3/2000)
Then there are the cosmetic surgery ads in the newspaper showing the before and after. That part I can understand. I mean, if you’re gonna blow a few thousand bucks, you should be able to tell which is which, right? Sorta like why do they have to put up signs directing people to the psyche fair?

March 7th  (3/2/2000)
We have a legislature those mostly just draws a paycheck, the electorate here votes directly on propositions, and a lot of ‘em. So on March 7^th, as the rest of the country watches to see whom we choose for presidential nods, we residents of The Golden State have a bunch of truly important issues to decide, including opportunities to fund this and that, grant special favors to Indians and parents, and be gratuitously mean to homosexuals.

Apple$ and Orange$  (3/1/2000)
The Internet is turning the whole pricing game on its ear. National on-line retailers are popping up like crocuses in spring, and are able to undercut local outlets because (1) they don’t have to pay the cost of operating a storefront — they’re essentially just warehouse shippers — and (2) they don’t have to charge sales tax.

Elephant Graveyard  (2/29/2000)
With the shift in the past week, and the apparent repudiation of Bush by all but the dinosaurs, I’m coming to believe that McCain could actually win the nomination. Of course, the shoot-from-the-lip former POW could easily submarine his own chances with the wrong remarks.

Margin of Error  (2/28/2000)
In the shooting of Amadou Diallo, there are some distressing facts which supported the charges, though not, eventually, to the jury’s satisfaction. The jury, which included four blacks, found the cops not guilty of all charges, including reckless endangerment. This, despite the fact that the four men fired 41 shots at Diallo, killing him instantly.

Bits & Pieces  (2/25/2000)
What’s in a name? I passed up the opportunity to get off the freeway for a bite the other day. Maybe because it was morning, and I wasn’t hungry, or maybe because the sign said "The Feed Bag" and it kept me goin’ down the highway.

The Faux Hero  (2/24/2000)
It happens, you know, that people without a full compliment of marbles still somehow manage to float to the top. In business, they sometimes call it a new management style. In science and the arts, they call it genius. In politics, it can just get very bizarre, like Ross Perot and Admiral Stockdale. In the White House, it would be a disaster.

Election Reform  (2/23/2000)
Not only have crooks taken over the system — both in writing and cashing those political checks — but the greater casualty is that the public has lost faith in how we create our government. No wonder, considering the bozo parades that march through the capitals and the headlines.

Naked Emperors  (2/22/2000)
And finally there’s the case of John Rocker the 25-year-old pitcher for the Atlanta Braves who was suspended for a month — with pay — because he said some outrageous things about homosexuals, immigrants, and New Yorkers. Hey, don’t suspend him, educate him. We say he’s wrong so teach him right, and then send him out to preach the truth. If he’s not too stupid to learn, he could make a difference.

What Girls Are For  (2/21/2000)
Which means that you will find the most important learning and the greatest delight by staying present, and not getting a handle on it or her. It's like arriving in a new place, where you don't know the customs or the language. Present yourself at your finest -- that is, the most truthful. And ignore into silence the little voice in the back of your head — the old and younger you -- that would offer commentary on what was happening.

Bits & Pieces  (2/18/2000)
Sometimes I think we’ve got the wrong people at the front of the herd. People like Bush-lite and Clinton-dark should not be leading. They should be at the back. They are the ones who should fall to the wolves. And yes we need better wolves.

Poor Man's Network  (2/17/2000)
Being a start-up and on a tight budget, CNN built its news operation with back-benchers, and they have never recovered. Though they became successful as a business, they never raised themselves as a news organization. To wit they depend on people like Wolf Blitzer, Jeanne Meserve, and Candy Crowley. This is not to say that the ABC-CBS-NBC people are much better; they aren’t, much, anymore.

Once Is Enough  (2/16/2000)
The sheriff’s office is now making noises that they are actually protecting the boy from the clutches of his mother. Bravo to the sheriff’s office for their purported rationale. Uh-uh to their methods. Surely our society — even in Tennessee -- has advanced to a point where children don’t have to stab people to protect their mothers and sheriffs don’t have to arrest them to protect them from their mothers.

A New Birth of Freedom  (2/15/2000)
That’s the way we do it in national politics -- we cheer the underdog until he wins and we see him for who he is. When the general public stops suckling at McCain’s sincerity and takes a good look at this guy, and his past, they may well discover that they’ve just discovered how they’ve been snookered again, albeit by a different wolf in different wool.

Happy V.D.  (2/14/2000)
We don’t labour at love the way we used to, rather, we too often use it as a lever and as a cudgel. We use love as excuse for everything, good and bad. We can risk family, job, and reputation in the name of love. Over and over again. And until recently in Texas, you used to be able to shoot your wife, if you found her in the arms of someone she loved.

Only Time Will Tell  (2/11/2000)
We have been inundated by a wave of anti-intellectualism that once was scorned and now is celebrated. You can see it on television, programs like "The Drew Carey Show", where stupidity and cowardice are the foundation and whining manipulation is the currency. Remember when we used to welcome new ideas. Now we shun them.

Those Crazy Californians  (2/10/2000)
When you consider what has come out of SillyCon Valley over the past thirty years -- much of it designed, produced, and marketed by some of the craziest people you could imagine -- then ya gotta reassess what you mean by crazy. It is indeed a fine line between genius and insanity, and a lot of people slip back and forth.

Three Gals and a Preacher  (2/9/2000)
The Chaplain of the House of Representatives is paid $133,000 a year and has taken more foreign junkets than the pope. At least he’s in touch with his constituents, I mean, congregation.

The Lone Ranger  (2/8/2000)
I outgrew The Lone Ranger. And Superman, too, which had a similar spirit of "truth, justice, and the American way". I discovered the real world where things weren’t so black and white, where criminals did not bow out gracefully, where not everyone was saved. And looking back on that transition — a deflowering, if you will — I can better appreciate what Clayton Moore believed.

Loose Links  (2/7/2000)
Military Minion William Cohen is trying to sell the concept of our anti-missile program to our allies. He says he wants to avert nuclear blackmail. Shame, not only would we be turning the demilitarization clock back to 1972 when we signed the ABM treaty, but we do not now and we never will have a technology that can create a true safety shield against any and all would-be terrorists.

Education Is More Than a Political Issue  (2/4/2000)
When you think about how California has been such a pioneer -- from social advancement like pollution control and smoking restrictions to the technology of computers and the Internet -- it’s kinda ironic in a very ugly way that with all of our cutting edge pushing of envelopes, we have allowed the state public school system flush itself down the toilet.

The Emptior Caveat  (2/3/2000)
I wonder how far we are obligated to go to protect people from their own ignorance and stupidity -- by stupidity being willful ignorance -- and more problematically, their grab for an illusory brass ring. I wonder at the endless stream of elderly poor who pour their life savings into the black hole of faux confidence, and wind up on the local news, on their way to the welfare rolls.

Groundhog Day  (2/2/2000)
In Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, so the story goes, Phil the groundhog will emerge from his burrow on Groundhog Day to check the weather. If it’s cloudy, Phil will get spring started early. But if the sun is out, his shadow will frighten him back into his burrow for six more weeks of winter. I don’t know about sun or clouds, but someone should keep Phil away from the newspapers or spring will never come.

Super, You Betcha, Uh-huh  (2/1/2000)
I told Linda I wanted to turn on the television to watch the commercials playing during the SuperBowl. She said I could watch the game itself if I wanted. I knew it was pointless to argue. Sorta like what you say to the guys who said they bought Playboy for the articles. Uh-huh. Only in my case it was true.

Weather or Not  (1/31/2000)
Now of course we can forgive the weather service. We always do. We ridicule Them, hurl vituperation at Them, but we always forgive Them. It’s a strange relationship we have with Them. Them with a capital T. They’re almost of a stature with God with a capital G.

Cowardice & Heroics   (1/28/2000)
If Bill Bradley wants to win, he’s got to earn the vote of the people who have been turned off to politics. People who used to vote but who stopped. And the way to reach these people is to show that he’s different. He needs to show a sharp wit, an unabating sense of justice, and an emotional drive to lead us to a healthy and productive future.

Bucket of Scraps  (1/27/2000)
A great thinker also off the field, Adams said that he wanted his son to be a great soldier, his grandson to be a great lawyer, and his great-grandson to be an artist. Bang-zoom. Imagine having the opportunity to vote for a man with a mind like that.

In Det  (1/26/2000)
Now I don’t argue that some people can get themselves into financial difficulties, and I speak from experience, but when you borrow against your next paycheck, it’s gets really ugly, really fast. And those most likely to succumb to the temptation are those with the fewest assets, including intelligence.

The Likelihood of What-If  (1/25/2000)
It is the function of the conscious mind to adjust the squelch, so that when you are listening, you’re not inundated with just a lot of noise. That means letting the imagination flow freely at appropriate times, but knowing when and how to encourage it to go in a particular direction.

Bits and Pieces  (1/24/2000)
"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent." Who said that?

Dog the Wag  (1/21/2000)
I am astounded by the low quality of retail sales these days. No wonder so many people are shopping on line. You get more information, when you want it, and don’t have to suffer the indignities of watching a multiple-piercing victim chew gum.

California Gleamin'   (1/20/2000)
We’ve been worried about a drought here in the Northern Sacramento Valley because rainfall was well-below normal. But in the last week or so, we’ve had several inches of rain and it’s delicious to be out during that sunlit window, to see and smell nature in her early explosion.

Bar the Stars and Bars  (1/19/2000)
If we have to keep fighting the Civil War, we’ll never move forward. We need to worry less about the past and focus more on the future. But first we have to right our ship of state. We must remember our heritage through imagery that doesn’t tear at the very heart of our whole nation.

Inner Self & Ego   (1/18/2000)
I believe that the smaller the ego, the less interference there is between my true self and the rest of the world. I liken it to the difference between diving in one of those big clunky suits with the helmet and the hoses, or wearing a wetsuit. Obviously one is more protected in the clunky suit, but much more flexible and adaptable in the thin rubber suit.

Below the Fold   (1/17/2000)
The Pentagon is beefing up our anti-terrorism defenses by adding rapid response teams to the National Guard in 16 states. According to one official, "They live it, they breathe it, they think it and they train it seven days a week, 52 weeks a year." Oooooo, those nasty terrorists better just watch out now.

If U Cn Rd This   (1/14/2000)
The state of California has yet another industry that will produce nothing but irritation. By passing some pet legislation, our fearless legislators now require certain of our citizenry to waste thousand of hours and millions of dollars in an afternoon of tedium.

Bits & Pieces   (1/13/2000)
Californians were hit up for almost $200-million last year for charities. But less than 44% of the amount raised actual went to the causes for which they were solicited. The bulk of the money went to the people who did the raising.

Libre America   (1/12/2000)
The judge’s decision, and short may it live, is just the latest example of the breakdown of the American social contract. Miami is now more Cuban than American, just as parts of other American cities have been ceded to groups with whom authorities simply don’t want to mess. As it were.

What Did They Say? (1/11/2000)
There are too many people out there these days with publicists. It’s semi-benign when some tinseltown heart-throb becomes a parent and a publicist tells the press, but too often these days, corporate executives and political figures hide behind these "flaks".

License To Learn   (1/10/2000)
Leaving Sunday was a little more complicated. The clouds and fog appeared, disappeared, and appeared again. At departure time, it was well below even instrument flight minimums. But in an hour, the sun burned off much of the problem. I checked by phone to make sure that the rest of the route was weather-safe and we took off.

Libre Cuba  (1/7/2000)
If an American child were held by another country in a similar case, he would  have been back in a matter of hours or they would have gotten a visit from our Marines.

Art & Craft   (1/6/2000)
Here we were at lunch, me and the two head honchos of Ascot Aviation, for whom I’d been creating a marketing program, along with the fellow who owned a chunk of Ascot through his holding company. About ten minutes into our lunch, the investor turned to the other guys and said, I want Tony to work for me.

Criticism From The Inside  (1/5/2000)
This is not to say that criticism doesn’t have some value. Nothing is perfect, after all. Was it Rodin who said that in every work of art there is a flaw? And if we didn’t have critics, there wouldn’t be enough room in the gutter for the addicts?

Evil Is Not Live Backwards  (1/4/2000)
I’m all for freedom of religion, but in Afghanistan, it is psychosis. And the responsibility for this country pioneering new depths of darkness lies squarely on the foreign policy mavens of the Soviet Union and the United States.

Limits On Sympathy   ( 1/3/2000)
We waste huge sums trying to level the playing field for a very few, to provide access everywhere for everyone, and we shouldn’t. We pay exorbitant amounts 
on a few, and then shortchange the many -- also with sharp minds and healthy character -- who just need a little help to get started.

For earlier SetonnoteS commentaries....