Over the years I’ve periodically encountered cheek kissers; people whose preferred greeting consists of a series of puckered lipped head maneuvers. When I was younger the kissers were usually someone’s girlfriend, a “glamourous” White girl from Seattle or Los Angeles who pronounced “Nicaragua” as if ordering a fancy cocktail and blurted out “Guatemala” so that…
Picture yourself on a transcontinental flight, economy class, sitting in a middle seat with a weary mom trying to console her crying baby on one side of you, and a large man who is intently staring at his blank video screen on the other. A bit of turbulence starts, then intensifies, the plane bouncing up…
Last month I was privileged to travel to Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island. The isle is a speck in the vastness of the Pacific Ocean, 2,190 miles from the Chilean coast. The Pitcairn Islands are 1,290 miles away; Tahiti, 2,700 miles distant. It’s one of the world’s most isolated inhabited islands, with perhaps…
My wife, Debbie, and I often marvel at the steady stream of airline mileage points we collect just because we purchase items through our credit cards. The freebie enables us to periodically fly to Michigan to visit Debbie’s family at little or no cost. It’s a regular reminder of the adage “the rich get richer.” …
Over the years I’ve learned that how I experience a place or activity is greatly influenced by what I bring to it. This was certainly the case on a recent trip my wife, Debbie, and I took to Nashville after dropping off our only child, Sara, at the University of Puget Sound to start her…
More than one-dozen households have responded so far to the View’s call for up to 2,000 readers to subscribe at $5 to $10 a month; less than the cost of two cups of coffee. These generous community members will both receive the paper in their post and ensure its availability to others. Please consider doing…
Last month’s front-page editorial announced that the View would fold on its 50th anniversary, August 2020, unless new revenues sources can be secured. Readers responded with a plethora of ideas, and not a small amount of money, including contributions that ranged from $50 to $500. One thought, if acted upon, would ensure the paper’s…
“It went by so fast,” my 80-something father exclaimed, when I told him my daughter would be attending college in the fall. “Yeah,” I said. “I know.” In a year and a quarter, I’ll turn 60, an unimaginable age to my younger self. Sixty was when people started preparing for retirement, purchasing the necessary plaid…
His six children called him Siegfried the Dragon Slayer, a name he embraced. His 13 grandkids knew him as Grandpa Ziggy. His beloved wife, Luba, called him Freddy. Fred S. Findling earned all those appellations, and more, leading a life of courage, compassion, charisma, and love. His heart, crushed by the loss of his parents…
There are lots of things for which to be grateful. A baby’s soft laugh, a puppy’s cutely clumsy gait, the rain. Our lives are filled with people, places, and things that bring us joy, comfort, safety, and much more. In this issue of the View we identify a number of the boons our communities are…
Each of us is born into a beautifully flawed world, though the balance differs depending on individual circumstances. Some of us, emerging newly slick from the womb, are welcomed into a family full of hugs, smiles, and material well-being. Others are left cold on the table, confronted with immediate, wrenching, long-term physical, emotional, and spiritual…
A more than 20 percent increase in San Francisco’s property tax roll, combined with a state program, the Educational Revenue Augmentation Fund, which shifts a portion of “excess” local property taxes to public school systems in each California county, has showered $415 million of unexpected revenues on the City. The windfall is indicative of San…
Dr. Peter Venkman: This city is headed for a disaster of biblical proportions. Mayor: What do you mean, “biblical”? Dr. Raymond Stantz: What he means is Old Testament, Mr. Mayor, real wrath of God type stuff. Venkman: Exactly. Stantz: Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling! Dr. Egon Spengler: Forty…
San Francisco elects its supervisors by district, rather than citywide, so they’re closer to neighborhood people and issues. The hope is that district supervisors will be chosen by voters who know their character, with a mandate to advance community interests. With almost 73,000 residents, District 10 is one the City’s most complex jurisdictions. Although taken…
Last summer I visited the painfully exquisite 9/11 Memorial & Museum, in lower Manhattan. Through a carefully constructed flow of architecture, images, sounds, and objects, the institution skillfully recreates that terrible September morning and its immediate aftermath. I walked past burnt fire engines and video loops of planes smashing into the World Trade Towers. An…
Those of us with siblings or close cousins are familiar with a game in which one family member recalls a childhood memory, only to have its veracity challenged by another: it didn’t quite happen that way or didn’t actually occur at all. Our recollection of past events is clouded by time, emotional (self-)manipulation, stories re-told,…
1970. I’m 10 years-old, waiting for a haircut at what’d now be called an old-fashioned barber shop in West Covina. The chairs are filled with men, most likely in their 30s and 40s, but to my adolescent eyes they seemed Biblically ancient. I desperately wanted to grab one of the Playboys strewn around the side…
When I first started working in Africa, as a U.S. Peace Corp volunteer more than 30 years ago, John F. Kennedy remained a warming American glow. In West Africa, where I was deployed, Senegalese would praise the long dead President, alluding to his charisma and grace. Kennedy’s popularity was no doubt burnished by his late…
A couple of years ago my wife, Debbie, and I joined a tour of Lower Haight homes built more than a century ago. Mostly Victorians, their facades were exquisite in ways San Franciscans sometimes forget to appreciate: carefully crafted moldings, vibrant color contrasts, one-of-a-kind windows. Their painted faces create a festive public sphere, like a…
Late last year, John B. Anderson died at the age of 95. Anderson, a former Republican congressman from Illinois, unsuccessfully ran for his party’s nomination for the presidency in 1980. When he failed in that quest he launched an independent campaign for the office, ultimately securing almost seven percent of the national vote. I first…
“Ugh, I don’t want to go there!” my 16-year-old daughter, Sara, exclaimed. “It’s so boring!” We were on one of our frequent meandering drives in and around San Francisco, a favorite Sara activity. She loves to wheel around freshly found neighborhoods, especially those with long, lovely, boulevards: Lincoln, Folsom, Twin Peaks. While I enjoy these…
Last year’s heat waves – peaking at a scorching 106 degrees in San Francisco in the fall – may be the new normal. There’s nothing we can do about whatever natural temperature patterns are at play, and little reason to believe that humans’ contributions to weather changes will diminish much, at least in the remaining…
No parent would willingly allow a stranger to enter their home, slip down the hallway unseen, enter their child’s bedroom, closing the door softly behind them. Yet that’s exactly what’s happening through the portals of mobile devices, all too often leading to actual physical encounters arranged through such applications as Tinder, Snapchat, and texting. Nine…
Straws – those slender plastic tubes from which to sip frothy, sweetened, coffee drinks, sodas, and other beverages – are awesome. Children transform them into toys, sucking in chocolate milk at different speeds, in a kind of stutter-step race to the top. They hold one end to trap the liquid, allowing it to pour out…
The following three dialogues imagine the conversations sparked when newlyweds arrive for the first time at one of the spouses’ ancestral homes, to which the couple will be moving, with a fourth centering on an exchange amongst nannies. Readers are encouraged to create their own scenes, mixing and matching the various scenarios and characters into…