You’d have to look long and hard to find a more interesting, intriguing, compelling (I’m not even sure what the right word would be) sports figure of last half century or so than Magic Johnson.
Agree?
I grew up watching this man battle Larry and the Celtics. I cursed him and his Baby Skyhook. I watched him humanize the fight against HIV and change the way we think about the disease. And it's amazing to watch what he continues to achieve. Be that as it may... Beat LA!
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He will not allow history to be re-written:
via andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com
Don't you just love Obama stumping? Preach, Mr. President, preach.
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But alas, it never happened. He never went home and now never will. Never, there it is, that inflexible word that trails close behind that other non-negotiable syllable, death.
via hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk
Touching words from Peter Hitchens.
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Of course he deserved his fate. Of course he was evil incarnate.
Of course the brave men and women of our armed forces deserve our praise, respect and thanks.
But what is the appropriate reaction to such an event? How should we (how should I) react to our national ability to finally find and kill a tall, bearded, despicable needle in a needlstack? Sunday night Americans streamed into the streets to celebrate. Time magazine was so kind as to build a little slideshow of it (oh the page views!). We danced and chanted. We sang and hollered. Our team won! Yes we did.
We've been collectively waiting for a "Victory" with a capital "V" for quite some time. "We needed a win," say they. I've heard quite a few folks on the tv refer to our long dreary decade since 9/11: wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Great Recession, $5 gas, The Biggest Loser... but really it's been much longer than that, and really it's much bigger than that.
When was the last time we won a war? Really won one?
When will be the next time? Really win one?
War has changed radically since the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, since Hitler tried to answer the German Question once and for all. Since we answered them with unvarnished violence and unity. War has become smaller. It has become television. It's become virtually impossible to "win." As politics have become pettier on the domestic stage so too, in a way,has war become smaller on the international one. Not that death and destruction should ever be minimized, but Pax Americana has never really been about Pax... but rather about minimizing the impact of Bellum to preserve the Order. Korea is still divided. Vietnam was the Quagmire but served its purpose according to the Containers. Proxy wars in Africa aren't satisfying to the population and Peace Keeping Missions? Please.
Sure, the Coalition beat back Saddam and sent him packing back to Baghdad (the first time), eventually pulling him from a hole (the second time) but... was there "Victory?"
So Sunday night we got 'em. We got it.
We won one.
It was tangible. It took a decade and the wealth & blood of a great nation, but we got one. And it wasn't drones or foreign intelligence that did it. It was good ole' fashioned Agency detective work and a chopper full of SEALs. So we danced in the streets and kissed the first girl we could find because Victories are hard to find these days and few and far between.
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Kelly and I had a wonderful lunch today at Piccino. It was impromptu and delightful. It was delicious. And I can only assume it was composed of ingredients both organically and locally raised because, hell, what San Francisco neighborhood restaurant worth its blackboard specials would dare serve inorganically raised food shipped in from elsewhere? Today, food in California, and especially in the Bay Area, means so much more and is treated so much differently than it was when I was growing up in Massachusetts. It will be interesting to see if this new focus on "Food" is a fad or a movement. Will we look back in hindsight from 2020 and see this infatuation with local, organic and sustainable as a fundamental shift in eating habits or will it seem an indulgent blip on the radar of an ever more mechanized world?
The role of food in my life has certainly changed radically since moving to California in 1999. Growing up food meant family, as it does now, but it was served without much fanfare or variety. Now eating is an experience. Kelly remembers her childhood much the same as I do mine, and she was raised for the most part in Albany, a mere stroll from where Alice Waters started this entire movement at the venerable Chez Panisse. Her parents are Midwestern, mine from Boston, and both are of the same Baby Boom generation that came of age When America Ruled the World. The America of the 1950s and 1960s was on the move. It was growing tremendously. It was laying highway by the mile and building cars; containing Communism and sending men to the moon. After the victories against the Germans and the Japanese in WWII (which, in no small part was enabled by America's industrial capacity), industry was king. Why would food be treated any differently than cars, electronics or toys?
Bread was a Wonder, bleached and then enriched. Juice went to space, dehydrated, as Tang. The microwave was born and came to rule the kitchen where speed and efficiency would help defeat all foes. Farming truly became industrial and television helped turn food brands into national icons from sea to shining sea. This is not the only way to look at post-WWII America, of course, but it certainly is one way to view it. Industrial food production and marketing helped fuel the growth of a Superpower. One might even argue that the cheap and generally healthy calories of industrialized food were a necessary ingredient of that growth. And now perhaps those calories are having their revenge in the form of obesity, diabetes and cancer - a metaphor far too easy to invoke.
Is this changing? Are we changing? In the Bay Area we largely live in a post-industrial America: we are technologists, artists, financiers, and marketers. We create media and connections and tremendous amounts of wealth. Are we, here and now, reacting to the past 60 years of industrial food history or are we overreacting, an indulgent outlier population, to a 2000 year arc of ever more mechanized and processed food?
More qualified authors than I have tackled this topic and certainly with more than 500 words. I just wonder if in 2020 more people will be aware of their food's origin or fewer? Is this truly a movement or just a fad of the over-connected searching for bits of earth amongst the bits?
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