Almost every time I turn on the radio, I get pissed. And, unfortunately, I reflexively turn on the radio almost every time I get in the car. It is always on NPR because that is the primary way I get my news – but, it seems, the news is always bad. Really bad. But the world is bigger and and more wonderous than the news tells us.
All posts by Steve Stern
Believing Is Being
In Lila: An Inquiry Into Morals, Robert Pirsig writes about bringing a boat into a strange marina, in a strange river town, in the dark. He has the wrong marina or the wrong town, I don’t remember which, but the harbor lights didn’t match the charts and he kept moving the real lights around in his mind to make them fit his imagined reality. He was in the wrong place, but it seemed like the right place because he was mentally moving the data around. In other words, Believing is seeing, not the other way around. I wrote that four years ago, I believe it, even more, today except that I want to add: Seeing is being, we are what we believe we are.
A couple of weeks ago, Burt Kuhlman and I went to the California State Railroad Museum. Driving to Burt’s house, I was listening to the Dr. Christine Blasey Ford testimony on the car radio and, when he got in the car, Burt said he had been watching it on TV. So, as we drove up to Sacramento, we continued to listen to the testimony of Dr. Ford. When we got there, we both agreed the hearing was more interesting than the museum, so we skipped the museum, turned around, and drove home, listening to the start of Brett Kavanaugh’s testimony. After listening to Dr. Ford testify – and then watching and relistening on TV at home – I find it hard to see how anybody thinks she is lying. But I already believed her and her testimony just gave me a framework on which to hang that belief. I know that, but she was so vulnerable, so honest, and so strong that I thought that even some Republicans Senators would believe her. That doesn’t seem to be the case.
I want to preach something, but first I want to tell a story. A somewhat embarrassing story. In 1966, I started a development/construction company, bas Homes, with my friend and mentor, Sam Berland. Sam was about 30 years older than me and, in many ways, he was a father figure, he certainly was one of the most influential people in my life. He had been my boss at Shapell Homes and we agreed that going in, we would continue that relationship. He would be President of bas and, after five years of his tutelage, I would step up to President and he would stay on as an advisor. When the five years were up, I asked to become president and he agreed by saying I could be President and he would be promoted to CEO (and still boss). After a couple of months, I started whining and Sam finally agreed to an impartial referee to settle our disagreement.
The ref moved in and watched us for a week or two and interviewed almost everybody in the company. When he got to me, he asked me if I really wanted to be President and I said: “of course”. He asked me that, he said, because in his experience, men – sorry but that’s the way it was in those days – who really wanted to be a company President, went after it “like a dog after red meat” and I wasn’t doing that. As the Ref pointed out, I was asking Sam to make me President while I was still bringing questions and problems to him, for his decisions as if he were the President. He said that if I really wanted to be President, I would make the decision and then present that decision to Sam as a fait accompli. My priority was not taking over but having Sam like love me. I wanted to be President but not at the expense of our relationship. Sam wanted me to love him, but he was the boss and if that hurt the relationship, he was sorry. Looking back, I realize that Sam thought of himself as President; I thought of myself as his assistant. Sam was not going to give me his power, I had to take it and before I could take it, I had to own it.
I think our country, the world really, needs women to take over and run it. And the operative word here is”take”, men are not going to give their control up. Men, especially we white men, think that the world needs us even though we are the ones who are ruining the world. Women already have more power than they are using, they control much, if not the majority, of the private money in the country – just look at the number of ads that are selling wealth management targeted towards women – and it is time to start using that leverage.
Poor rat
We had rats in the underfloor area of our home. I’m hoping that “had” is the right tense, here, and that this poor fellow is the last of his family, but, who knows, the rats are relentless. We think that one way they got in was through a hole they made by pulling a piece of plywood away from the wall. We electrocuted this poor fellow and I feel kind of bad about it. She, or he – I didn’t look very closely – was just trying to make a living, after all. However, rats don’t live well with humans, they are too smart and too tenacious. Rest in peace, dead rat. 
“The Good Place” a rave review
Michele and I have been watching The Good Place and we love it. It is a comedy that was originally broadcast on NBC so each episode is about 24 minutes long watching it on Netflix without the commercials. I don’t want to tell you too much, let’s just say that it stars Kristen Bell as Eleanor Shellstrop who, after being killed in a freak accident, thinks she is in heaven. Check it out, please.
Going to the East Side, ah, 395, you know, the East side of the Sierras
US Highway 395 runs from the Canadian border, just north of Spokane, through Reno, into the LA Basin, where it gets lost in the freeway maze around San Bernardino. A big chunk of it, about 300 miles worth, running through the high desert along the eastern flank of the Sierras, is one of the most spectacular drives in the world. I drove across California to 395, a week or so ago, to get a couple of pictures of the Sierra monolith at sunrise. It is the first time, in over ten years, that I’ve gone somewhere to just take photographs. I had forgotten how much fun it was.
It is about a five-hour drive from our house to 395 via Tioga Pass, normally about half of the distance and one-third of the time is on freeways but I told the Hyundai’s trusty GPS – Miss Song? – to minimize freeways so it took me about eight hours, going over the Coast Range at Patterson Pass and through the Central Valley on back roads. I stopped at every place along the way that I’ve always said I would stop (but, always, at some other time).
That had the added bonus of getting me to Siesta Lake just as the light was getting good. By the time I got to the Olmsted Point scenic turnout, the light was good with clouds hanging on the face of Cloud’s Rest. Olmsted Point is at 8300 and it was already cool but I hoped the sky would get better in the sunset so I decided to join the other photographers who were standing around waiting. The sky did get a little better but it got much colder and I kept getting into the car to warm up. 
Leaving Olmsted point after sunset, I drove east through Tuolumne Meadows in the failing light and then down to Eureka Vally in the dark.
Eureka Valley is 37.9 miles east of Highway 395, towards Death Valley, on the Big Pine-Death Valley Road and I figured it would be a good place to throw down my bag and spend the night. It was. At about 3000 feet, Eureka Valley was a balmy 62° and I didn’t even have to zip up my bag. Still, it was the first time I’ve slept on the ground in about two years and it was not as easy as I had expected. Part of it was that my Therm-a-Rest had a slow leak and went flat during the night but the bigger problem was that I had driven into Eureka Valley, picked a place to sleep, and put my bag down, in the dark and I always find that a little disquieting. That was made up for, however by the incredible night sky. I was about as far from a large light source as I could get, a bizilon stars ran from horizon to horizon, and the milky way was bright enough to walk around by. I woke up about 5:17, eight minutes before my alarm and loaded the car. I stopped just as the road left the valley, turning from gravel to pavement – to use the word pavement in a very generous sense – and took a picture of the horizon as it started to get light. Forty-five minutes later, driving down into the Owens Valley, the Sierras were glowing in the morning sun.
After sunrise, my plan was to drive into Bishop and get an old-fashioned breakfast with a couple of eggs over easy, bacon, and hash browns but the light was so fantastic that I decided to drive up to Lake Sabrina at over 9,000 feet. The clouds that were so beguiling looking across the Owens Valley were now clouds cutting off the sunlight at Lake Sabrina where it was 34°. Every once in a while, the light would break through, lighting up the Aspens but 34° is cold and I got tired of waiting for the light to improve, I got back in the car, turned the heat up high, and drove a mile or so to North Lake where the light was a little better and the shores, incongruously, were full of Chinese women photographers (not shown). 
I ended the morning at South Lake which was beautiful but the sweet light was gone so I called it a day and headed home.
