Turn It Up - Singer of Hippie Anthem "San Francisco" Dies

Singer Scott McKenzie died Saturday in Los Angeles at the age of 73. You may not know McKenzie by name, but you will certainly recognize his best-known work, the 1967 counter-culture hit "San Francisco."

If you're going to San Francisco, you're gonna meet some gentle people there. 

Not sure if that's still true these days, but if you visit Haight Street, you'll definitely meet some people with flowers in their hair. RIP Scott.

Always Home

As I grow older, home is an ever more elusive concept.

My home is in Northern California, amid the rolling green hills and canyons, a short drive away from the Pacific Ocean. Golden Gate territory, where the fog rolls in and slips over the mountaintops like thick Fisherman’s Wharf chowder. Home is where Paul is, the three-bedroom condo where we sit comfortably on our sofa to watch football on Sundays and Glee on Tuesday nights. It’s the apartment-sized kitchen where Paul prepares the tasty meals he learns about from Ina Garten, and where I choose to wash our dishes by hand, before placing them in the dishwasher to dry. Home is my Starbucks on Laurel Avenue in downtown San Carlos, staffed by my barista friends, and it’s the nearby tennis courts, where I try so desperately to be a better tennis player, and a little less diligently to be a better sport. Home is the new friends I’ve made in California, and the old friends who have moved here, each in search of their own west coast adventures.

But as I sit aboard a 54-seat Continental Airlines jet, climbing high above the panhandle of Florida where I was born and where my family still lives, as I look down and see the Gulf of Mexico, my Gulf of Mexico, drifting further away out the airplane window, I know that I am leaving another place I call home. Living with my mom and dad for the last three weeks and assisting with my father’s recovery from open-heart surgery has been a powerful reminder about my other home – my original home. Morning coffee and politics with dad, afternoon errands and late night talks with mom. A nephew’s baseball tryouts, a niece’s impromptu violin recital, an evening meal with my father seated at the head of the table. A barbecue and beer shared with my brother-in-law, laughter and hugs shared with my sister. An afternoon rekindling an old friendship, a visit to the university, a half-dozen desperate trips to my beloved Chick-Fil-A. I am home.

If home really is to be found where the heart is, where love is, then my home is indeed in two places, and really, even more. The place where I am from, the places I have lived, and the place I call home now. The galaxy where those who love me most have made their lives, and the far away universe where I build my life now, and love them back as best I can.

All these places are home now – the old world where my roots run real and deep, and the new world, where my heart is open and alive, and where my dreams are taking flight. I am unfathomably grateful for the gifts each place has given me, and for every person who has shaped my life along the way. I am thankful that I'll never have to choose between one place or the other. I am home. As I forge ahead carrying the past inside me, into a future that can only be imagined, always home.

30 Giant Companies Paid No Taxes - Should We Burn Something Down?

Like most people I am shocked and dismayed by today's report that thirty of the nation's largest companies paid no income tax for the last three years. This news is aggravating and at the same time fascinating, especially when juxtaposed against recently announced tax reform plans from Herman Cain and Rick Perry, both of whom claim our corporate tax rates are so amazingly high that they are killing job creation. 

It's hard to know what to do with the kind of anger I feel, but I'm growing more certain that the Occupy Movement, as it stands now, might not meet my needs.

Should I camp out in a public park in downtown San Francisco? 

Nah, it's rainy out, and besides, I'm not so clever with the sign-making.

Should I head over to join the protest at the port in Oakland? 

Honestly, my graffiti skills are rusty and lighting shit on fire is not my style. 

Maybe I'll just publish this ridiculous news about corporate tax rates in a snarky blog post? 

Doesn't make me seem too cool, but it seems reasonable. Just not sure it will matter....

...Then again, I'm still not sure the Occupy Movement will make much difference either.

It's My Fault (San Andreas, That Is)

A few days I blogged about the four minor earthquakes we experienced here in Northern California over a seven-day span. These temblors were mild, registering between a magnitude 3.0-4.0 on the Richter scale, which is not particularly earth-shattering (pun-intended). For most of us in the Bay Area, the impact of a 3.5 quake is that you hear a short low rumbling sound, or maybe your kitchen window rattles for a second. Truthfully, I am often blissfully unaware of quakes of this magnitude, until I hear about them on the local evening news or read about them online. Still, four tremors in a week is enough to make a fellow curious.

I did some reading to find out what significance geologists ascribe to this rapid series of mini-quakes, and from what I can tell, the scientific conclusions are akin to, "who the hell really knows." They could be foreshocks, minor tremors that precede seriously bad evening news broadcasts ("it was a rough commute on Highway 101 this afternoon as the entire road liquified and fell into a gaping hole in the earth"), but more likely, it's just routine shifting of tectonic plates - the geologic equivalent of the earth having a yawn and a scratch.

I can accept a little ambiguity. We are talking about the earth's crust, after all, which was formed by complex geologic pressures and events that took place over billions of years (or nearly 5,000 evangelical years). If we need a few thousand more generations of scientists to really nail this down, then so be it.  

My earthquake research led me to discover more about the San Andreas Fault, the 800 mile long crack in the earth's surface that runs through California, and the place where two of the earth's giant tectonic plates meet, and then proceed to occasionally tussle a bit. When these two plates rub elbows, there is enormous friction and an energy release in the vicinity of the fault line, which sometimes causes your hummels and tchotchkes to shimmy a little, and other times causes tall buildings and double-decker bridges to collapse.

The San Andreas Fault serves as a perforated line that runs north-south through California, wherein the state can conveniently be torn in two with the western half then free to drift out into the Pacific Ocean. Most of us who ever lived outside of California have made that joke, but most of us didn't subsequently end up moving ironically into the heart of the land of tectonic wonders.

Four Earthquakes in One Week? C'mon Man.

Courtesy David K. Lynch (Geology.com)

The Occupy movement isn't the only thing rattling Northern California this week. Four times in the last week the San Francisco Bay Area experienced mild earthquake tremors between magnitude 3.0 and 4.0.

From our condo in San Carlos, I didn't feel the earth shift for any of these mini-quakes, but once or twice in recent months I have experienced the feel of a modest tremor. The first time I thought a giant diesel semi truck had parked in front of our condo and left its engine idling incredibly high. The next time it sounded like the upstairs neighbors decided for some reason to slam the front door three times in rapid succession before rolling a giant filing cabinet across a tile floor.

As a relatively new Californian, I was surprised to find these modest tremors are not uncommon at all, and initially, I found them to be sort of novel and exciting. Lately though, they've been coming more often and closer together. Like contractions. And we all know how messy that ends up.

I was beginning to wonder what all this means. Is this all precursor to a bonafide building crusher? Is the rapture really coming soon? If the 49ers actually lose only one game all year, will the earth open up and swallow the bay area before the playoffs?

Science seems to be no help in unraveling the mysteries of the earthquake. It turns out that issues of geology are not so easily understood nor are they predictably resolved in a matter of weeks or months, over even decades and centuries. Scientists will ultimately be able to better predict the timing of major earthquakes, but they will need just a couple more millennia of study before clear patterns emerge.

In the meantime, out here on the left coast, we're simply forging bravely ahead with our daily business of protesting things, legalizing marijuana, and other stuff like that. All the while, in light of a possible devastating quake, we make sure to conduct occasional reviews of our building evacuation plans, and we keep large sturdy tables around so we have some place to scamper if need be.

Rest assured, here in the San Francisco Bay Area, we remain shaken, but not stirred.

Pic of the Day - Free Concert in SF

Enjoying the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass concert in Golden Gate Park. So far, we've seen Hugh Laurie and Patty Griffin, and Chris Thile (Nickel Creek) is next.

As you can see, there are a few folks here.

UPDATE: iPhone 5 Prototype Goes Missing in SF Bar

The plot thickens. There have been some internet reports that Apple didn't actually lose an iPhone 5 prototype. There are a few more specific details in this SF Chronicle article, which substantiates the original rumor that the prototype was actually lost. The article explains why there was no public police report about the incident - "Police found later that there was no record of the officers' involvement because Apple did not want a report created. As the organization that had lost property, it had that right, [SF Police Chief] Suhr said."

San Francisco Police have been assisting Apple, Inc. with the search for an unidentified item that went missing in a SF bar. While it hasn't been explicitly stated, clues and reports indicate that Apple's lost item is an iPhone 5 prototype. Oddly enough, this is not the first time Apple has had this problem. Rumors are that a previous iPhone prototype had been left at Harry's Hofbrau, a Redwood City cafeteria-style restaurant. For a company that emphasizes so much secrecy around their new technologies, Apple folks seem to have a hard time keeping their phones in their pants.