It's over. Lawn signs are disappearing. The Farmers' Market is selling produce, not politics. And what are the lessons? For me, it's simple. Stay involved. I confess to having been AWOL as Menlo Park's future took shape. In five years, there were lots of opportunities to support, oppose or amend the El Camino Real/Downtown Specific Plan. Frankly, I wasn't paying much attention. I saw the occasional report, read an article here and there...but otherwise ignored the process. That's why Measure Read more [...]

What does your typical posttraumatic white-guy-crippled-by-black-guys audience member do while listening to Bryan Stevenson? Several things. First, you get stirred by his cause, reinstituting fairness in our nation's courts and prisons. Then you get stirred up, and in the very opposite direction. At the very least, you experience a flood of anger at what "they" have done to you. And there is a "they," three black kids with a gun. No doubt about it. Except that they disappeared almost 50 years Read more [...]

There was no transition from the hot breath of the Upper Sonoran Desert to the coastal plains. Not for me or my brother or my sister. One moment, my parents were married and living west of Palm Springs. The next they were not, and one was in Santa Barbara. My parents' battles and divorce had been dramatic. But to be plunked down down in Santa Barbara for a six-week summer visit, however full of emotional undercurrents, was still a relief. An arid land by the sea is a different thing. From my mother's Read more [...]

This particular fear is so persistent that even after its source, or apparent source, evaporates...the malady lingers on. It's driving, of course. And it's driving me crazy. Or at least to distraction. As a story...well, there is none. Or it's the same story endlessly recycled, one of those curses like The Flying Dutchman or Groundhog Day. A narrative that keeps eating itself like a mystic snake. Again, my only frame of reference has to do with scale, the very smallness of my disabled world. By Read more [...]

It's the anxiety. Mine. Where does it come from? Is fear a concomitant of age? If so, perhaps it's there for a biological reason. You know, watch the ice on the steps. Try not to topple over in the bathtub. That sort of thing. I don't know, but it's there, and it's part of my daily landscape. That is to say, there is much less running on automatic. Hop in the car and go...well, anywhere? Not now. I have had my Chrysler van for a full year, and I'm still not easy with the thing. In fact, I'm not Read more [...]

How do you know when you're home? In my case, when you sit on a cat. The man who sat on a cat – yes, it sounds straight out of Oliver Sacks – was a man who originally sat in an armchair. He sat there because he was tired, at loose ends, and seeking the nurture of introspection. Staring at the wall, I describe it. So there I was, fresh from the Last Writer's Disruption, a splendid two days in Monterey, ensconced and ready for writerly thoughts. When that other thing happens, writerly distraction. Read more [...]