End of Days (in 2006)

Well, the year is seriously winding down and everyone is coming out with their best of or year end lists, so here at the Salinger Hotline, we thought, why not get in on the act as well.

So, here's some listy things - my top things that I either did or thought about or saw or just made an impression in some random way in 2006, in no particular order of importance (except for the top of the list, of course).

2006 in list form:

My Life with Karen
Well, of course this is top of the list because this is the most important part of every year, the life we make together, the things we share, the care we take of each other, the love we have for each other - all make the top of the list any year, and this year was especially great because it gave me the opportunity to give Karen a year off from work and so there was a specialness to it, and Karen repaid me in kind by really taking care of me this year as well.

The Wire – Movie of the Year. TV Show of the Year, Art of the Year, Best Literature of the Year
There's just nothing better on TV, as far as I am concerned. It's gritty, it's bleak, it's sometimes tough to watch, but oh, the writing, the characters and the story development - not surpassed anywhere. Can't wait for the new season (regrettably the last one).

Other Notable TV (Deadwood, Sopranos, Weeds, Big Love, 24, Heroes)
Some other good shows - not as great as The Wire, but definitely worth watching. 24 and Heroes are here because they are not perfect TV, and the writing isn't nearly as good as the others, but they're fun to watch anyway.

Sankai Juku
One of the most interesting dance companies ever, always intriguing and thought compelling and mesmerizing to watch perform. And if you love all white, you'll love Sankai Juku (see the blog review from November).

Gracia and Brian in New York in March
One of the highlights of the year, showing New York to my daughter and son-in-law, neither of whom had ever been there before. The other great part of the year was having the opportunity to help Gracia quit her job and focus on getting through school.

Watching Kelsey and Hailey grow into teenagers
From little girls that I could get on the floor with and throw around to serious(ly) grown up, seemingly overnight, but I love them so much and love watching them blossom and grow.

Scotland
Almost two weeks with Karen in the greenest place (I've been), staying in fabulous old mansion style hotels, visiting castles and lochs and highlands, great meals, driving on the other side of the road on narrow Scottish roads - a real vacation for a change.

The Farm
The sweetness of Gaston and Nadine's 40th wedding anniversary party, seeing family, hanging with the cows, my favorite country place in France, the memory of the land that my grandfather was born on - and then 3 great days with my sister in Paris.

Modern Medicine – Christophe, Laura, Karen,Joanne, Mom
Those who know me know that I'm just not a fan of going to doctors, because they don't call it "practicing" medicine for nothing - but there were some moments this year that made me very thankful for the progress that has been made in medicine. Karen Salinger coming through her tumor on the pituitary flawlessly, Laura coming through a couple surgeries, my Mother having a pacemaker installed to solve a heart problem, Joanne doing away with a tumor in her ear that affected her hearing without having to go through radiation and my friend Christophe coming through non-lymphoma Hodgkins and chemo for many months with a clean bill of health. And then there was my friend from work, George Welling, who nearly died from a massive heart attack, but just ran another marathon and is in training for yet another. That man is a modern medical miracle.

Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and others for helping me to clarify my thoughts on evolution and religion
Praise the universe for evolutionary biology, rational thought and the survival of the species.

The Demise of Donald Rumsfeld and general discrediting of the neoconservative/Republican agenda
Enough said here in many previous blogs.

Dinner at the Library of Congress
One of the perks of work, getting to go to cool places and meet cool people and do cool things. The Library of Congress in DC is just gorgeous at night with candles on the tables, low lighting and dinner with interesting people.

Valencia – AC sailing
Watching America's Cup boats sail in the waters off Valencia - another perk of working for Oracle and having a great boss, (no, not Larry - my boss Judy).

Dixie Chicks
For their courage to stand up to censorship, for their music, for the live concert Karen and I got to go to (another Oracle perk), to their movie, "Shut Up and Sing", these gals were up there on my list of heroes for the year (and other years as well).

Sitting courtside at Warriors game
Yet another Oracle perk (helps to have the naming rights to the Arena), the up close action was way cool and I got to share this perk with my brother Dave, who never could beat me in basketball when we were in high school, but I give him credit for trying almost every day. He gets me back in other ways these days.

Movies (ones I liked, in no particular order):
Wondrous Oblivion
Little Children
Little Miss Sunshine
Volver
Casino Royale
Army of Shadows
Transamerica
An Inconvenient Truth
Shut Up and Sing
The Queen
Children of Men

Books (that I can remember I read and liked - there's probably more, but my feeble brain can't seem to remember - guess I need to start writing things down):
No Country for Old Men – Cormac McCarthy
A Walk in the Woods – Bill Bryson
The Book of Salt – Monique Truong
The Brooklyn Follies – Paul Auster
The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins
The Shape of a Pocket - John Berger

Peace, Love and Hope - on to new and maybe better things in 2007!

Wondrous Oblivion

Karen and I saw a truly sweet little film last night called "Wondrous Oblivion". We highly recommend it.

Touching on issues of race, religion, friendship, family relations and the wonder of oblivion (sometimes), it's set in what looks like the 50's or early 60's in England, before the civil rights movement, but definitely after WWII - kind of a time of innocence, but also lurking prejudices still very much inherent in white society.

The story mainly focuses on a young boy and his passion for cricket, but where that takes the story is just foundational and this film shows (again) why good storytelling and great character development matter more than glitzy Hollywood special effects to make great films.

It's a hopeful story, but doesn't shy away from the very real attitudes that still shape our society and has some inherent messages about immigration and immigrants and their place in building society as well. It's timely in many ways.

Go see it.

The Hope Debate

Lots of interesting stuff today. Seems like we're headed for either a healthy debate or just more of the same, depending on who you read or talk to.

Roger Cohen, in a posting today in the NY Times Select section http://select.nytimes.com/iht/2006/12/27/world/IHT-27globalist.html, posits an interesting hypothetical speech that Bush (or maybe someone with bit more vision) might give to the Iraqi people laying out the opportunity before them, if only they would step up and take it (by taking a longer view of things forward, and not focusing on the past.

Interesting ideas, and probably too late, but if a policy of hope could actually emerge, which would obviously require far more than the nice words in this hypothetical speech, then we might have our own opportunity to debate a reasonable way for us to help the Middle East now that we've opened up the Pandora's box of religious and ethnic retribution that has been tamped down by authoritarian regimes for so long, and to look at what liberty, freedom, democracy, etc really mean and in what context the US can and should support it.

On the downside, two commentaries in today's SF Chronicle, one by Robert Scheer http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/12/27/EDGOULJ6PK1.DTL, a persistent and consistent critic of the war and the machinations behind it, and Alexander Cockburn, a muckraking journalist of the finest order http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/12/27/EDG58N61K31.DTL, show how the debate is being squelched even now and even by the newly major Democrats. Disappointing to say the least, if true.

January will be an interesting month to see how any of this gets played out.

Fall into Winter Holiday Tidbits

Cheers all. Good-bye to fall, hello to winter.

Feeling funky over holiday cheer, rest in peace "Godfather of Funk, Soul" Mr. James Brown.

In the 13th century, Francis of Assisi went crusading in the role of a peacemaker, not a warrior, and met with a sultan who was the nephew of Saladin (who had defeated the crusading Christians back in the 3rd crusades), and they talked for a week and could have formed an alliance for peace, even though the Sultan had superior forces and did not need to negotiate. But, the Catholic bishop on the scene declined and chose to fight (s0 much for Christian charity), and the Christians were soundly defeated once and for all, thus assuring the schism between Islam and Christianity that has now lasted many more centuries.

Imagine a world of peace if this attempt at peaceful negotiation had come about so many centuries ago.

Imagine a world without religion to fight over. Now the (Christian) Ethiopians are attacking the (Islamist) Somalians, extending the religious wars we got started again in the Middle East into the Horn of Africa, and who knows where next.

We have need of talking, but to whom do we talk? Who is in any position to really listen and take anything we say seriously? After six years of losing the moral courage, what do we have to talk about that holds any weight?

It's the season of giving, and I see that Wall St. is giving itself the biggest bonuses in history and there's not enough 2 million dollar pieces of property to even go around anymore to the poor fund managers with money to burn and we're extending the tax cuts for these guys, so gosh, what are they going to do with all that extra cash?

And New Orleans continues to struggle, and millions still live in poverty in the richest nation in the world, and people are dying by the minute from treatable diseases because the big pharma companies can't seem to make enough money.

Oh well, eat, drink and be merry and keep shopping, because it's the American way!

Peace, love, justice and joy in 2007. I'll keep holding out for little moments of hope to carry us through.

Rummy's Farewell Party

It's disgusting.

First we have to endure Medals of Honor to Tommy Franks and Paul Bremer, both of whom made enough mistakes to ensure that our ill-advised foray into whatever Iraq is (democracy promotion, preventing WMD, toppling authoriatrian regimes, opening up religious Pandora's Box, etc.) may be, but now we have the audacity of 19 gun salute sendoffs and gratuitous remarks from the top two executives of the country to a man that led the way into this morass and positioning of him as some kind of uber visionary that will be vindicated some day as right before his time.

Frankly, I'm appalled. And, a little disappointed. If this was anytime from 1968-1972, there would be mass protests in the street, putting the same kind of pressure on our feckless leaders to get out of Iraq that was put on LBJ to get out of Vietnam.

Sure, the circumstances are not exactly the same, but given the election results, where is the mass outrage? Have we all grown so complacent that we just sit back and wait for the next Congress to try and actually do something? Don't hold your breath on that one. Or, are we all still just too comfortable in our brainwashed, lulled into holiday shopping mode that we don't have the ability to muster any sense of duty as citizens to put this pressure on, not having been asked to sacrifice anything personally anyway by our "leaders" during a time of war?

Donald Rumsfeld asked way too many of our young people to make the ultimate sacrifice for a grand vision that has now turned into an all out religious war and may lead to a broader religious war and fight for supremacy in the Middle East, and far too many of them have paid the price in death or disfigurement. He wasn't alone in this, but he's been called the architect of it and along with his pal Cheney probably had more influence on the decisions made than most others that were involved (hello Wolfie and Feith).

What I'd like to see is the Democrat's holding a party for the generals that told the truth about troop levels needed before the war that Rumsfeld forced into retirement as a counterbalance to this sickening sendoff that Rumsfeld has just received.

Good riddance as far as I can see.

Now The Decide to Have a Debate?

Good Lord!! Now Bush has decided to wait until January to present a "plan" on how to move forward on Iraq? Where was all this penchant for debate and coming up with a plan in 2003, when they decided before all the facts were known or avenues of other options were explored to just go ahead and take us to war?

Could this be any more ridiculous? Get out now and let them have their religious war on their own.

It's just too frustrating for words.

A Much Longer View

Back in 1996 Brian Eno and others started an organization devoted to rethinking the faster/cheaper mindset for something slower/better by taking and promoting a long term view of how things should operate. Check out their website http://www.longnow.org/about/.

There are times when I want the world to slow down so that I can think through things a bit, and I often find myself caught up in the everything must happen now mode (especially of work) that we all get caught up in.

Not only does that leave little time for fostering community, being with family and incorporating lifelong learning into daily life, but it seems to me that it also leads to the kinds of erratic and misguided governance that we're seeing now in this country and others, where everything is predicated on the next election cycle, the next market cycle, the next shopping season and even the next crisis to be solved at work.

What if we had actual leaders that promoted policies and ideas that spoke to the long term health of the planet, country, community, etc, and risked both their own professional careers (ie, not getting elected again) or their particular political party's fortunes by pushing for the longer term - and actually, what if these same (not yet existent) leaders actually took the time to learn about every policy they were proposing, every culture that might be impacted?

Now, one could potentially argue that this might lead to no action, ever. One might also argue that things like democracy promotion and starting wars in the Middle East are actually aimed at a long term solution.

But, my guess is that if smart and focused people talked at (enough) length about real problems and explored them honestly and realistically that things would get done and action would be taken - and that these actions might have a much better chance of actually improving the long term lives of people and the long term health of this planet.

What's interesting is that there are people, mostly outside the realm of politics, that are trying to do this. Whether they can or will have any long term effect remains a question - but if people like Al Gore, now that he is out of the electoral politics arena (at least for now) can continue to push for thinking about problems in a way that serves the longer view, then there might be a modicum of hope.

As depressing as all the news is on Iraq and the damage that the Bush presidency has done in general on just about every front, and the lack of anything like a real plan to come from the Baker-Hamilton led Iraq Study Group, it at least seems like it has woken up enough people to challenge the political structure of the country to start taking notice of the fact that patience is still a virtue and that there are solutions out there, but it may take some time to actually think them through (diplomacy anyone?), and that we're now finally reaching a place where we can start having some honest debates in this country about what the proper role of government should be, how much power any one branch of government should have and what the United States' role in the world should be (or even can be at this point given the amount of damage now done to our reputation and the corners we've painted ourselves into in the last four years of misguided and incompetent administration of government by the current administration.

For me, things like The Long Now and Slow Food continue to hold enormous appeal as a counterbalance to the world seemingly spinning out of control.

Congratulations! David Salinger - Employee Supreme

A family member update.

This is from "The Oracle", Dephi Productions newsletter. There was a picture attached, but can't seem to get it copied in a format that I can insert here.

Employee News
Dave Salinger has been an integral part of the Delphi Productions team since he came on board as Delphi’s first dedicated Project Director over ten years ago. He has handled large scale projects such as Mattel and Apple Computer’s trade show programs and Novellus’ elaborate events. He also spent three years working on Denver Museum of Nature & Science’s “Space Odyssey” exhibit. Dave’s efforts are now primarily focused on producing NextFest. He has been a key player in this project since the first annual event, helping to develop Delphi’s relationship with Wired. He has already hit the ground running on NextFest 2007.

When Dave is not hard at work at Delphi, he enjoys cooking and skiing. Thanks to Dave for all he does at Delphi!

And, thanks and congratulations to Dave for all he is as a Salinger!!

Did Anyone Really Think We Were Going to Have a Breakthrough?

Now that all the politicos can exhale again (having waited with bated breath for Baker-Hamilton to make their grand pronouncements), does anyone seriously think this changes anything?

With Shrub still claiming that the only viable solution is "victory" (what the hell does that look like at this point anyway?), and having immersed us in an extremely untenable position vis a vis Iran, Syria and the rest of the Middle East, just how do we disengage from the war we started that's now a civil war and that without some resolution apparently (according to our beloved President) will haunt Americans for generations if we quit now?

My vote - Arab problem, let the Arabs fix it themselves and let's get out of the way sooner rather than later. And let's start the road to energy independence so we never have to worry about going back there.

Are we spooked yet?

Generational Gaps in Music?

Karen and I went to see a performance by the Tacaks String Quartet yesterday of 3 Beethoven string quartets - all lovely, beautifully performed - at the Hertz Hall on the UC Berkeley campus.

I was struck by the audience demographic, which tended to 99% over 50, just judging by appearance. This isn't the first time I've noticed this when attending classical music concerts in the Bay Area, but it bothers me that at one of the pre-eminent universities in the (world), in an area known for intellectual curiosity, that more young people did not and do not avail themselves of the opportunity to hear world class music played by world class musicians.

Yes, ticket prices are likely high, though I know there is student pricing for these things when they are on campus, as this was, and it was a(nother) beautiful fall day outside, but it gets me wondering whether there is a real generational (not to mention ethnic as there were no minorities except Asian to be seen either) gap in the music world today and whether we're losing the ability to cross generations and ethnic groups and have something to say that is relevant when it comes to the performing arts.

My guess is that the majority of this audience would be unlikely to attend anything with a more contemporary nature to it, whether classical or other musical genres, but I could be generalizing - it's just a hunch.

A Perfect Fall Day

One of the things that I love about living in California is that you have to pay more attention to the changing of the seasons. There aren't the obvious signs like in other parts of the country and you have to be more aware and really look for the signs of the season.

Today was one of those days where if you were paying attention you noticed the crispness in the air, and if you were driving along Saratoga Drive in San Mateo you would have seen some beautiful fall colors, bright reds and golden ambers on the trees lining the street.

People I know that have moved here from other parts of the country always tell me how much they miss the different seasons from where they came from, but I'm convinced that they are just missing the beautiful nuances of the seasons here in the Bay Area.