2004-05-22 - 11:12 a.m.
The rapidly coming end of the school year is a nightmare here, like this whole school year has been. Never in my life did I ever conceive that I would ever have a job that had so much work to do. Is that what the current economic times have brought us? I don�t know the exact percentage, but I do know that every single day more work comes in than can possibly be done in a day. It feels like we get a day and half�s worth of projects or meaningless paper-shuffling every day, although it is probably more like 1.1 days worth each day. Whatever, it still means that all you do is get more and more behind, you never catch up. Maybe it is something like this that ages people, or kills them prematurely. It�s amazing that the people who seemed to have lived to be over 100 years were always black women who had been born slaves. That ought to tell us something, the former slaves have longevity and the �free� people die before they hit seventy.
The other people in the offices near me have long followed the pattern of working what I call �attorney�s hours� in order to keep a handle on it. (Do they earn attorneys� income? No, they do not, and I don�t either.) They seem to always be there. They come in at six or seven o�clock, and stay to seven or eight o�clock. They feel guilty when they take a day of vacation.
I absolutely refuse to do that. What would I be getting in exchange for that level of slave-loyalty? I get done whatever I can, whatever is most important, and the rest, well, who really knows what will ever be done with it? But it�s just getting truly ridiculous, it really is. There are so many things that are so wrong, and this, really, is just a minor issue, comparatively. And since I am the kind of guy who gets things done at work that nobody else would or could do, I feel like I should be applying that quality to things that really matter. More and more with the horrors of what is going on in the political scene, with high-level office holders violating every principle of decency and good sense, I�m actually feeling guilty that I am not doing anything substantial about it. Like run for office myself, maybe? How on earth does one succeed in doing that, anyway, or even get started?
Graduation for the kids is rapidly approaching and that is yet another of the many deadlines that hangs over my head. The woman in charge of the Washington trip asked me if I thought I could possibly get the trip video completed in time for graduation. Well, actually, I hope to get it done before the end of May, but it is amazingly time-consuming and difficult, especially since it is all being done on my own time, of course. As if I had any. Recently I have likened the process to building the Taj Mahal with sugar cubes. I have close to a thousand separate film clips, and I still have to film twelve more children. But I am sure loving the results, that much I will say. And I�m learning a lot in the process, and enjoying and appreciating the kids even more than ever, just due to these little interactions with them.
I�ve knocked the formality of the video down a peg or two, because the attitude of the kids has helped me to understand that what they will remember of their school years is not all the lessons that they learned, but all the friendships and all the fun they had. I�m even glad that I made those bloopers in the filming, which I do not know how to fix and now probably wouldn�t fix, even if I did know how. It�s really very cute to see the reflections of their friends and tormentors watching what we are doing and amicably harassing our efforts. I was worried about being able to see me in the glass, but really, I�m about the last place anybody�s eyes will be resting. Otherwise, there is a lot of exuberant playground activity reflected that subtly adds an atmosphere of fun. It�s almost so good that people might think I did this on purpose, and besides, nobody could have been that stupid as to have made that mistake!
Of course, I have been thinking a lot about the meaning of America while making this video, and working with the kids takes me back to when I was approximately their age. I forget the exact year, somewhere in the early to mid-sixties, but President Kennedy was going to be the speaker at the graduation of the University of California at Berkeley. Through some kind of educational organization, certain selected elementary school children, one boy and one girl from each school that was participating, was going to be invited to attend the graduation and see President Kennedy in person. I was the boy chosen from our school and it was an incredible honor and privilege. (The girl chosen, interestingly, many years later, ended up being my date at the high school senior ball.) We were understood to be the two students who would get the most out of the experience. And what an experience it was! Not only seeing President Kennedy in person, but the graduation itself impressed the heck out of me. It was in the university football stadium and it was packed solid with people in the stadium stands and all over the football field itself. This graduation was really a heavy duty thing, with not only all the graduates earning their bachelor�s degrees from all the various schools and departments, but those getting their master�s and doctorates, as well. I loved all the caps and gowns and colored hoods and all the incredible pomp of the occasion. I yearned for the day when my turn would come and I would get to be in a graduation ceremony like that. And ironically, the University of California at Berkeley is the college where I earned my bachelor�s degree.
But there was no graduation ceremony. It was spring quarter of 1970, the year Nixon expanded the Vietnam war into Cambodia with bombings that are still killing Cambodians even today (due to the many unexploded shells still buried in the farmland). Imagine if tomorrow Bush took the war into yet another country beyond Iraq, say Syria or Iran. And if people today were politically active like they were in the sixties, instead of sheep asleep in front of Fox News or the latest reality show.
The anti-war demonstrations (if you were anti-war) or riots (if you were pro-war) were probably the most intense of any Berkeley had ever had in its several-year history of such social and political unrest. The campus was almost like the battlefield at Gettysburg, nearly impossible to even see across due to the constant presence of smoke�from tear gas, CN, and pepper gas. I�m sure they would have even used napalm on the students and demonstrators, if they could have.
Unable to effectively work in this atmosphere, many of the Berkeley professors simply cancelled their classes mid-year, giving everybody either a pass or fail, depending upon their performance so far. I had a couple of professors who left for Canada. Thank God I was able to gather all the completed units I needed, because this was the quarter I was supposed to graduate.
As a punishment that affected all the students (most of whom, really, were like me, just trying to complete their courses), graduation was cancelled. There would be no large, impressive, solemn graduation ceremony in the football stadium like when I had seen President Kennedy, as I had dreamed I would someday get to have. Instead, each department had a pathetic little meeting to which the parents were invited. Since my degree was in Business Administration, the School of Business Administration had theirs in a nameless seminar room that was big enough to hold the fewer than a hundred of us who were graduating in that department that year. The Dean of the school, or somebody, I really don�t remember, simply stood up and gave a five-minute speech. Nothing resoundingly inspirational like President Kennedy�s speech. Then he said, �Congratulations, you all have graduated,� and everybody clapped politely. There was no mention of individual names, no parading in front of your parents, no handing out of diplomas�those were simply mailed several months later. Honestly, it just felt like nothing, and I am more proud of a little xeroxed Certificate of Completion that I earn from some workshop or extension course that I take nowadays, than I was of my graduation from the University of California at Berkeley where President Kennedy once spoke. In a way, instead of being sent soaring from a launching pad, it felt like simply being kicked to the ground.
Even so, I feel like I never quite lost my connection with presidents and other holders of high government office (however slight the connection). President Kennedy was the first, but I had others.
When I was in high school, the mother of one of my friends was the chairman of the League of Women Voters of San Mateo County, and when the Republicans had their national convention in San Francisco that year, my friend and I got invited to help direct car parking at a special event that was happening at the Mortimer Fleishhaker estate in Woodside. There I met presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, esteemed Senator Everett Dirksen, and many others. I�ll never forget that day, I wasn�t yet even sixteen years old.
When I was a freshman in college, Ronald Reagan was then Governor of California, which meant that he was also a member of the Board of Regents of the University of California. One day there was a Regent�s meeting and I wanted to go see if I could catch a glance at Governor Reagan. I found the car he was brought to the meeting in, waited around next to it, and sure enough, when the meeting was over, he was brought out to the car. Not very many people were there, because it was raining. I got to shake his hand and then listen while he politely answered student questions for a while. He was willing to stand there in the rain, which really impressed me.
The mother of my girlfriend when I was in college was Pat Nixon�s best friend. Although Nixon was so hated among the students, this connection with his wife always made me think he couldn�t be so bad.
When Ford became President, my Uncle Ralph revealed to us that Ford had been his football coach! I didn�t believe it, it didn�t seem to make sense, but of course it was true. Naturally, my uncle made sure we were all big fans of his former coach and friend, Gerald Ford.
In 1972, I lived in Manhattan. That Christmas, the Nixon family and also Aristotle Onassis and Jackie Kennedy came to New York. I didn�t get to see Onassis and Jackie, but their yacht, the Christina (it was a SHIP, really, decorated with a lighted Christmas tree on the bow and another one on the stern) was docked right at the end of the street where I lived, so I got to see IT. I did see the Nixon family, however, ice skating at Rockefeller Plaza. One of Nixon�s daughters went to Finch College on the upper east side, where my current girlfriend was house mother of the dorm there while earning her PhD at Columbia.
Speaking of schools, President Clinton�s daughter, Chelsea, attended Sidwell Friend�s School in Washington, D.C., which is the same school my father attended.
Walter Mondale was vice-president in the Carter administration, and then Mondale ran for president against Reagan. I worked at the San Diego Union newspaper at the time (as an assistant to the editors of the editorial pages) and Mondale came in for a Question & Answer session. Since I worked on the floor where Mondale would be having his Q&A, I had to be cleared by the Secret Service. The day before the event, they had to install a direct line telephone to the president. This was before cell phones, of course. From the office windows, I could see all the equipment that followed the vice-president around�several limousines, a paramedic truck, a bomb squad truck, and many police escorts. Of course, I got to meet Mondale and attend the Q&A session. He was a very good speaker and had effective answers for everything anybody asked him. He was willing to be stopped and questioned everywhere he went, and spoke very forthrightly. I was quite impressed by him, he seemed like a very good man.
Move ahead to my current job, in which I�ve got to meet President Bush twice. The first time, we had a brief conversation, looked each other in the eye, shook hands, and he allowed me to snap a picture of him. I also got to shake hands and speak with Laura Bush, and I even got to pet one of their dogs. In person, they are both extremely charismatic and seeing them both made me love them. Now, of course, I�m really not so sure about who they really are. I guess to simply be president means that you have a special something, and all of them had it to one degree or another.
But still Kennedy had it the most and I guess he�s the one who affected me the most. I don�t know if that was due to him or due to my being so young and impressionable. But it was a good impression to receive and I am thankful for it.
But what it all means in the big picture of life, I�m still not so sure. I guess time will tell. But gee, one thing for sure, I ought to get off my butt and do something. Otherwise, maybe they sent the wrong boy to Berkeley that day. And I don�t want that to be the case. He�s kinda in here, tugging on my hand, asking me what�s up.
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