Context & Continuity

Local Heroes: Stewart Brand.

You already know the facts and the legend, Stewart Brand.  Considering the length of time he's been in the public eye, he's done an amazing job of making important contributions to the public dialog and understanding on a freakishly regular basis beginning all the way back to The Whole Earth Catalog.

I've written before about how I spent the formative years of my youth relentlessly enscounced in the Carneige Library, Fort Smith, Arkansas.  There, some of the oversized books were kept out for display and The Whole Earth Catalog was constantly on one of the reading desks.  For an ordinary boy with a fascination with tools, this was an amazing way to while away my hours.  Many hours.

This week, the Wal Street Journal decided to pay attention to Brand and spills some significant ink on a lovely color photo.  The occasion is the publication of his new book, Whole Earth Discipline wherein, among other things, he makes a case for nuclear energy.

Notice this from the interview:

I think I was the most prolific reader of books in the world for a while in the Whole Earth Catalog days. I was basically reviewing 10 books a day, 20 books a day. So I developed a pretty rapid way of sucking the marrow out of a book.

Often the first place I'll go is the index because I'll be looking for what does this person know, what do they refer to? I'm looking for the shortcut. I'll read the first line to see if they know how to start a book. I'll look around for a part of this [book] that I think I know about and see how what they know compares to what I know. And am I learning stuff. [more]

 

 

 

Your eccentric cousin sends a postcard.

Now that I've lived in San Francisco for some time, I'm able to detect certain currents.  These currents, ebbing out of the bay beneath the Golden Gate, don't flow according to any atlas or chart, but the geography of my career, from New York City to the city by the Bay. 

Bethatasitmay, I've come to notice the way New York views San Francisco.  Now, how shall I characterize it?  The sister who went away to the interesting arts college and makes pots for living?  The cousin who spends Far Too Much Time preparing for the Renaissance Faire?  I could go on but you've travelled this way before. 

I've been holding on to this article from the NYTimes since March 15, 2009.   What we have here is a new urban retreat.  Here's the glimpse:     

A core of 38 men and women — their average age the late 20s — live full time in the retreat center, a shabby-chic loft building in the South of Market district. They prepare meals together, practice yoga and mindfulness meditation and lead workshops in communication for outside groups as large as 60.

But the heart of the group’s activity, listed cryptically on its Web site’s calendar as “morning practice,” is closed to all but the residents.

At 7 a.m. each day, as the rest of America is eating Cheerios or trying to face gridlock without hyperventilating, about a dozen women, naked from the waist down, lie with eyes closed in a velvet-curtained room, while clothed men huddle over them, stroking them in a ritual known as orgasmic meditation — “OMing,” for short.

I am so jealsous!  When am I going to have the chance to juxtapose the words "Cheerios" and "orgasmic" in the same paragraph?  My fondest hope is that New Yorkers will read this, hop on the next JetBlue flight to SFO and part with their precious savings in pursuit of ... enlightenment?  In the meantime, I prefer my Cheerios with 1% milk, please.

[Link to the NYTimes story.]

Auntie Pays a Vist. Amused by what she sees.

It's been Some Time, since I arrived on the Left Coast, having relented (or succumbed) to irresistible gravinomic forces, that maelstrom known as Silicon Valley.  Nevertheless, I think I'll forever see the world through the grey glasses given to my by the New York Times. 

Being here, is rather like becoming the eccentric uncle who is kind of fun every now and then but we never quite figure out what he really does for a living.  Here, in the eye of the storm, we charming company but whey do they insist on being so different.  Yes.  So, our aunt visited and was shocked by what she saw.   Another cup? Shhhhhh.  It's the fog.

Quoth the Times:  Beneath the huge modified hammer and sickle painted on the wall behind the counter, body piercings are outnumbered only by the laptops open throughout the room. As latte sippers pore over the latest draft of a business plan, bang out a little code or post to a blog, it is not hard to overhear snippets of dialogue with a decidedly capitalist bent: “We could make money off that,” and “Have you talked to them about a deal?”

For the Web 2.0 crowd creating businesses, as well as the post-Web 2.0 crowd looking for businesses to build, Ritual is the place to be. While it has not yet risen to the mythic proportions of Buck’s, the hangout in Woodside, Calif., for entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, it is becoming the place to generate ideas, find staff members and troll for companies to finance.

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