I am arriving at the Civic Center BART station and rolling toward the elevator, my niece Eva and her boyfriend Patrick in tow, when I realize something is wrong. There is that sense of an out of body experience, or maybe too much of the wrong drugs in the 1960s, now making itself felt…or maybe just the effects of not have gotten out quite enough recently… but something is wrong.  Or maybe right. Because the unhoused, unwashed and unloved are not visible on the platform. Nor are their Read more [...]

Watch Danny Kaye bicycle across the silver screen in the opening of his 1958 “Merry Andrew” singing Everything Is Ticketty-Boo…and you’ll get the idea. I was feeling splendid setting out on my gravity-assisted journey down the hill, and hither and thither, to Canyon Market and on, you guessed it, to Cup. This very morning. And it was a fine morning, this one, not a cloud in the sky nor a trembling on the San Andreas Fault. Ticketty-Boo. Because it’s true. The best things in life are free. Read more [...]

It was on the Bill Maher show, of all places that I heard an AI expert sketch our modern condition as follows: Paleolithic brain + medieval institutions + 21st century technology. And at age 76, and knocking hard on the door of 77 (December), I will miss much of the unfolding of these circumstances. And come to think of it, will I miss, i.e., regret, not being here for the heat death of the planet? Oh, I suppose the answer is yes. Strange, we humans. The Paleolithic brain characterization Read more [...]

What are we supposed to do with Halloween? I do not ask this question in anything but the most sincere terms. And, just in case you want to provide a history lesson e.g., All Hallows Eve, forget it. The human attraction to spookiness is always there. Death. Mystery of the Grim Reaper, etc. Cyrus McCormick came up with a much cheerier version of the reaper, but look what happened to him.  Where was I? The answer is Los Angeles. Downey, to be exact. The name used to sound richly ironic. Read more [...]

Human energy is a funny thing. What is it, after all? Energy. We’re not talking E=MC2. Or are we? If we are, it’s way beyond my pay grade, so forget that. Energy. Best described as vitality. Which if you are navigating the earth’s surface with diminished neuromusculature…not a word, I know…well, you want as much as you can get, right? And in any case, on any day, you do want a certain amount for Muni. And I’m not complaining. The redoubtable transit agency is very much at the center Read more [...]

At 8:30 AM this Sunday morning I was up on my feet and being walked, by Jane, to and fro on the redwood deck. In an ad from the 1960s, or maybe the 1970s, a cartoon figure laments that his get up and go got up and went. Very funny. Timelessly funny if one is terribly frank. Because that’s exactly the way I felt this morning. And, no, not timeless in any good sense of the word. More of the running out of time sense of the word. Certainly running out of the energy. And somehow trying to do it, make Read more [...]