Revolution? What revolution?

It's now official. The current economic crisis has proved once and for all that the Woodstock Generation failed miserably. The Age of Aquarius has devolved into a barnyard cockfight. A generation that prided itself on creating an era of peace and enlightenment raised a generation of greedy kids that built an economy on shuck and jive.

Consider this written by my friend Jim McCann on Facebook (and used here totally without his permission):

The financial people are born of the "get mine" and "in your face" generation...The media, reality TV, sports. Decorum is frowned upon and even just winning is not good enough...It is considered not only ethical to win by any means necessary, it is celebrated. Those who are the most callous are the most admired...This has been magnified in a Wall St setting to the point that the system has followed its logical path and cannibalized itself.

It use to be that a child of a very wealthy family was encouraged to study, travel abroad, even to enter academia in order to give back...Now that "man of letters" is considered a slacker.
4 years ago it was the oil companies who "ran the government" now it is the "bankers" and neither is totally accurate...Many, many interests hold our system hostage.

Just look at how people have accepted torture as a "cost of doing business." We have no morals anymore. Aggression is king.

A sad commentary that is too true. Who is to blame for this? Well, we raised them. What were we teaching them? What lessons did they learn by watching us?

Of course, there were pockets of good parenting: My daughter, for instance. (Insert your own child here).

As one of the very few church-goers in my group of friends, I've got to say I think Jim hit the point when he wrote "We have no morals anymore." Maybe we Boomers were too quick to dismiss religion as hypocrisy and superstition. Maybe there was something valuable in those churches and synagogues after all.

Read All About It

I almost did the unthinkable the other day. I almost canceled my last daily newspaper subscription. I didn't stop delivery of the San Jose Mercury-News; but I seriously considered it. I found myself staring at the renewal notice and wondering if it was really worth the money.

I can't think of a time in my adult life when I didn't subscribe to at least one daily newspaper. There have been long periods when I subscribed to two daily papers. For a while we even had three papers delivered to the house every day. After spending about 15 years in the newspaper business, being an editor will always be part of my self identity.

I gave up my subscription to the Santa Cruz Sentinel when I moved back to Aromas. It was an easy decision because, to be frank, the Sentinel has become a terrible product. The Sentinel has never been a great paper, but it was usually at least mediocre, with some very good aspects -- I've always like Wally Baine's columns and the photography was pretty good. And, while the coverage was shallow, it was at least broad enough that I had a general idea what was going on in the community. But when the Ottaway group sold the paper to Media News, the paper went to awful with hardly stopping at bad.

The Mercury is following the same sad arc. Since its sale from Knight-Ridder to Media News, the Merc has lost news hole and gravitas. It's diminished in size and influence.

I've gotten into the habit of cruising the online version of the Sentinel -- 10 or 15 minutes is all I really need. Then I peruse the paper version of the Merc. But I find I only read the Sports section -- and that's mostly because of the late scores. As for the rest: the state, national and international news, I've already read most of it online before I went to bed the night before.

Some of my favorite sources are Internet versions of traditional newspapers such as the Washington Post and New York Times. But a lot of my information comes from blogs that I check every day. My reading list is at the bottom of the page. Check it out and you can see what important to me: politics, sports and beer -- not necessarily in that order. (By the way, I would be interested in your favorite blogs. Hit the comment button and let us all know what we should be reading.)

I know I'm kind of late to the party. Casey and Tim and most of their friends get all of their current events online. I doubt that Casey reads one newspaper a year and she is well informed. So, I am willing to admit that online news has a lot to offer. But I'm not giving up my newspaper until it's pried from cold , ink-stained fingers.

Economy-sized Dread

Ok, all of you who are scared crapless by the current state of the economy, raise you hand.

Anyone who doesn't have their hand up is either:

1. Independently wealthy
2. Lying
3. Not paying attention

I grew up believing that another Great Depression could not happen in my lifetime. Supposedly, the economists had it all figured out and, while we may have bumps in the road called recessions, we would never again face the economic devastation that we did in the 1930s. Maybe not.

I am hardly an economist so I may not be qualified to speak about fiscal policy or monetary policy. But I am pretty aware of my surroundings. And I don't like what I see. All around me I see people being laid off, programs being cut, and retirement accounts being drained like a leaky backyard wading pool.

My hope pretty much rests in Barack Obama coming to our rescue. He's a smart guy and he seems to have a bunch of smart guys and gals on his team. He has a plan to pump a lot of money into the system to do things that should be done anyway.

But partisanship may get in the way. Already the Republicans are dusting off the Herbert Hoover game plan and working on ways to kill Obama's plan. It's not like the Republicans have a lot of credibility. After all, it was their Greed is Good philosophy that got us into this mess in the first place.

But I am less worried about fixing blame for why the economy tanked than I am about getting the economy back on its feet. I just want the politicians to be solutions oriented.

I propose that we all make a pledge to vote for politicians of either party who work collaboratively to solve this issue. And let's make a pledge to vote against politicians of either party who insist on putting their own re-election ahead of doing what is necessary to ease the pain.

Hell, we could even start our own political party. We could call it the All for One and One for All party. Who's with me?

Raise your hand.

Happy New Year

It's been nearly a month since my last entry. It's not that I didn't want to post. I tried a couple of times, but I just couldn't write anything. The holiday season was hard for me this year. This was the first Christmas season since becoming single. The spirit eluded me.

I love Christmas. I love the traditions. I love cutting a tree. I love decorating the tree we just cut. I love going to Advent season church services. I love the Christmas Eve service. I love Christmas morning and family dinner.

At least, I used to love all those things. This year, it felt like all of those things were the property of other people -- not me. It felt like they had been stolen from me.

The gloom finally began to lift at the traditional carols and stories Christmas Eve service. The Christmas story is one of hope and promise. It is hard to not be inspired.

But the mood finally broke at the New Year's Eve party hosted by my friends Gary and Katy. It was a small group, but nearly everyone there was a good friend. There was one moment when I looked around the room and saw a group of good friends who have lived in Aromas for years and who were perfectly comfortable with each other. There wasn't any posturing. Everyone accepted everyone else for exactly who they are. It was safe.

Laura asked me if Aromas felt like home. It certainly did that night.

So on to 2009 and beyond.

What's White?

Let's have a little fun.

In a recent blog, I mentioned the mac and cheese is white soul food. That started me thinking about other things that are quintessentially "white."

Here a few I thought of:

Foods:

• meat loaf
• tuna casserole
• french toast
• jello salad
• bolonga sandwiches
• Vienna sausages

Vacation destinations:

• Branson, Mo.
• Disneyland
  

Sex symbols:

• Olivia Newton John
• Fabio
• Loni Anderson
  

Sports:

• Bowling
• Curling
• Hockey

Entertainment:

• "Grease" (play and movie)
• "Brady Bunch"
• Country & Western music

That's off the top of my head. Add to the list.

Playing at Life

Sports are on my mind tonight. Truthfully, sports are never very far from my mind. But there have been a couple of recent news stories that are playing in my mind.

One was this in today's SJ Mercury. It says that Asians have become the majority population in Milpitas and Cupertino. I take it Milpitas has been Asian majority for awhile, but the rapidly growing Indian population has now put Cupertino in that category. Frankly, I think that is great. It means that those communities will have a wider range of cultures to enhance the quality of life. But it made me wonder how the changing demographics has changed or will continue to change sports that are played there.

Already high school football is not the all-consuming passion that it once was. I went to several Watsonville High football games this year because my son-in-law, Tim, was a JV coach. And, while the fans for the varsity games were enthusiastic, it paled in comparison to the mania I remember from the Friday nights of my youth.

So now that there is a greater diversity of people in Milpitas and Cupertino will we see a greater diversity in their prep sports? Is table tennis coming? How about high school cricket? And if we see new games will we not see some old sports? And what about facilities? Will new games fit the old school?

I guess the new games are value neutral -- one sport holds about the same benefit to the community as another. But I guess I will be sad if cricket replaces baseball.

The other story that caught my attention is this about a shooting in the bleachers of a girls soccer game in King City. As a former high school athletic director, this story sent shivers down my spine.

Following the shootings, King City High School officials proposed to move the games to the afternoon rather than the normally scheduled early evening. I'm guessing that was a reaction to other schools having qualms about how safe it is to play games in King City. Experience tells me that every AD at schools that had road games at KC received phone calls from parents demanding that the games be cancelled or moved to their own schools. But the parents of the King City girls asked that the start times not be changed. They pointed out that they work and would not be able to see their girls play if they started earlier.

I think school made the right decision. It is easy to give into our fears and make knee-jerk reactions. But this is also one of those "teachable moments" when people are ready to listen and learn. Maybe this can be used to build community and not let the gangsters force good people to retreat from something that is important.

I think the old claims of sports teaching life lessons are generally overblown. But this may be a time when we all win when kids play a game.

Forget Me Not

I was going to post something yesterday, but I forgot

That's a joke -- kinda.

I have been forgetting a lot of things lately. Not really big things, I guess. Like yesterday morning, I couldn't remember if I took my vitamin and diabetes pills. Or like today, as I was heading out the door to work, I couldn't remember if I had applied my apres-shower deodorant. (Why that question even came to mind is kind of weird in its own right.). Or like the other day when I couldn't remember the exit we used to take to get to Spartan Stadium from Highway 101.

I used to have a great memory. Back in the day, you wouldn't have wanted to get in a trivia challenge against me. My family quit playing the home version of Jeopardy because my mastery of minutiae made me unbeatable. But now? Well, even the great Ali had to hang 'em up one day.

For a couple of years I've joked that I have a "park bench memory" -- the bench is full and if something old has to get and go before something new can have a seat. But that lame humor is masking a growing concern. I'm getting to an age where forgetfulness can't be brushed off as merely being inattentive or preoccupied (not that I don't have episodes of both). It's time to start wondering if there really is a decline.

If I am on the downhill portion of the road, I hope I can keep a sunny disposition. I wouldn't mind being thought of as daffy eccentric, but I don't want to be the grumpy old guy that yells at people all the time. My grandmother experienced dementia and she was always pleasant and glad to see me -- even if she didn't know who I was.

I think I'm OK for now. But if I have a confused look on my face the next time I see you, just smile and give me a minute.