The Gift of Tears

Remembering  my Mother, Leona Mare Carroll

August 9th, 1916 - October 4th, 2005

My mother, Leona Carroll Ireland, died 18 years ago. I wrote this piece when my mother began what would be the last years of her life. I dedicate it to you, Mother, and to all our mothers.

I woke up this morning missing my mother who has been dead now for several years. Given the contentious quality of our relationship for most of our 60 years together, I am surprised that oftentimes I find tears in my eyes when I think of her. We were locked us in absolute stalemate for almost 20 years. I still remember phone calls where she slammed down the receiver, long periods of not speaking—her cold punishment for my seemingly uncooperative nature—her steely resolve that by the force of her will I was going to get straight somehow, and marry.

A few short years before she died, I was blessed, or just got really lucky, when I was able to touch the pain her actions tried to mask. That alone took away their power to hurt, and allowed me to experience a kind of love that I could not have imagined.

There is a famous story in zen about a monk, Hsiang-yen, who, by most standards applied to monks, was a failure. He worked away in the monastery of his teacher expecting nothing - and he got nothing; he sat long hours in meditation - nothing; he did rounds of begging – right, again only scraps; he got thrown out of the hojo every time he presented himself before his teacher to check out how he was doing because he didn’t seem to be absorbing much. A hopeless case. So after many years of getting nowhere when his teacher died, convinced that realization was beyond his capabilities, he retired to a remote temple where he tended the teacher’s grave. One day, the story continues, as he was raking the stones in the orderly zen garden, (I like to imagine the ones you see in the fancy books with perfectly ordered lines in the rocks,) a small stone bounced off the garden wall with a Ping! Just that sound, and in a tumble his mind gulped in all his training in a single instant and he understood. He got his life.

Even someone who has never practiced long days of meditation can understand the appeal of this monk's story. Everyone I know has some dilemma like this in his or her life. For me my relationship with my mother was a huge conundrum.

I had flown to Tucson to be with my mother after her first serious heart episode. It was decided that she get a pacemaker; that the doctor would electrically jolt her heart, and, hopefully, restore a normal rhythm. Then the elements of a really bad melodrama started to unfold—my father disappeared for several days when he couldn’t take anymore, my mother brawled with her sister and a pretty buffed nursing attendant as she tried to put on her clothes to leave to go out into the street and hail a cab to take her home given that no one in her family seemed willing to obey her command and return her to a normal life. Eventually a really well-trained and compassionate case manager was the voice of calm, and mother agreed to the procedure. The drama to follow can be a quick note in the margin—further refusal on the operating table; family crisis; harsh words exchanged in anger; the heart specialist looks like the 14 year prodigy, Doogie Howser M.D., on the TV (I’m not kidding. He really did look like a teenager). I started to laugh, . . . this kid is going to thread electrodes through the arteries to my mother’s heart? What is she going to think? She thinks he’s cute, and refuses his treatment. Back to square one. That evening we would try again.

Before her surgery, she can have no food; even water is restricted—only small ice shavings. I hold a plastic cup and gently spoon the shavings on her tongue. She chews, and sucks, and swallows with smiles. I hear the ice click against the side of the plastic cup as I scoop it up. I use every bit of all my long zen training just to be with my mother for what might be her last moments of life—just her, just this spoonful, just this ice, just my breath and hers, just her pleasure in ice and water. It is very sweet, and I feel like the good son. If nothing else about zen, it does train you to be present in the moment. And that moment will have to be enough for this particular gay son after many long years of feeling outcast and abused. Yes, I decide it will be enough.

The medical procedure went as well as any scripted denouement on the Doogie Howser TV show. You couldn’t hope for more: the patient got well; the family crisis was temporarily resolved when the stubborn mother agreed to go to the nursing home; the father returned, shaken, humbled but unharmed, forgiven and loved; the gentle sister has taken over managing the mother’s care. And I boarded Frontier Air to return to San Francisco.

After the exchange of pleasantries, I discovered that my seatmates were going to San Francisco to be reunited with their birth mother whom they have never met (how could I make this up?), and I told them that I have been at my mother’s sick bed.

We are in flight. Staring out the window as we flew over the Rockies, across the desert and into the sky over Death Valley, I lapsed into a brown study, and sat mesmerized by the wonder of the world. The flight attendant offered me a second Diet Coke with ice. My orphaned seatmates passed the offering across the seats. I took a big gulp and as I swirled the ice around the cup, it clinked against the edge. In an instant my mind tumbled and I am no longer "me" in a plane over Death Valley, but I am in my mother’s life—I mean really, not some theoretical proposition—all of it, her hopes her pain her struggles her fear her birth her death, and I burst into tears and sob. My orphan seatmate understands something about finding mothers: she just reached out and gently touched my arm, holding me connected to the breathing world as my mind flies away. Did I thank her enough? Any trace of resentment, regret, bitterness, or recrimination about the way my mother treated me at any time in our lives together evaporates. She is just my mother, and I am finally able to enter into the mystery and wonder of being a son.

The plane lands in San Francisco. I mumble good-bye to my seatmates where the mother that gave them birth waits at the gate. I wish them well, and I walk back into my life, praying that everybody be lucky enough to find out who their mothers really are, to be able to step into their lives, and to cry when they are gone.

Kenneth Lawrence Ireland, Sr.

Aug. 8, 1913 - May 20, 2014

My Father was a remarkable man, and he lived a long and truly blessed life. When he died on May 20th, he was almost a hundred and one years old, and I might have entirely missed knowing and appreciating him.

I was sitting with Dad on the broad porch of his retirement home in Kennebunkport Maine. We were about 5 miles inland from the shore of the Atlantic. The sky was a very clear bright blue. A few light clouds were drifting slowly westward from the beach. He pointed towards the most distant and said, “Watch that one furthest out. It looks like it will roll in, but it won’t make it here. They all disappear.” I looked up and noticed that the sky above us was completely clear. Together we quietly watched the progress of soft white shapes drifting towards us as they gradually faded and then vanished.

My Father had just turned 100. I had flown in from San Francisco for the celebration and now a cab would take me to the train and back to Logan Airport. Although Dad was in very good health and his mind was as sharp as ever, I was not sure if I would ever see him again. Ashish and I had a trip planned to India the next year, and there was a quiet insistence from Dad that I travel to all the places he had dreamed of visiting. I felt a very deep sweetness in that moment. I wasn’t sad, perhaps a bit melancholy, but any regret had vanished just like the clouds drifting in from the Atlantic. It sounds trite, but I think we were both very much at peace. I loved this man very deeply, and finally after a lifetime of a strained relationship under all the Yankee emotional damping down, we were both just comfortable sitting silently side by side.

Just a few years before, this would not have been possible. I had entered the Jesuits after college, encouraged as much by separating myself from the emotional turmoil of my adolescence as by some vocation or higher calling. And in the process of unraveling those emotional knots, I had to separate myself from my parents. Thankfully that process didn't last beyond our life spans.

I have no idea where to begin, there are so many stories about my Dad’s intelligence, his impeccable memory, his endless curiosity and quick wit. His golfing buddies will testify how much he loved the sport and bridge partners will swear that he remembered every card played even when he was more than 100 years old. People will tell stories about his work ethic, his writing and stamp collecting. He was devoted to his family, our mother Lee, her sister Judy, his Dad, his brothers, our Uncle Donny and Rich, Uncle Chunk, his wife Freddy, and Bill, Don’s partner, his seven grandchildren and six great grandchildren as well as his many deep friendships.

I want to share one memory that changed our relationship. It’s also about memories. On one of my first visits to Huntington Commons, in part to hide my trepidation about not having visited for a long time (I almost called it off and probably would not have made the trip without Julie’s encouragement and support) plus my personal fears about not measuring up, I tried to start a fun conversation--reminiscing about growing up.

My father and I played a game: I can remember that friend with 5 clues. (Spoiler alert—Dad always won).

We went back to the time when he was a young dad, soon to have 4 kids, a new business, and the responsibility for an extended family that included our maternal grandmother, Nana, and mother’s sister, Judy, who was suffering from TB at a time when cure was far from certain. But our family life, thanks to both Mother and Dad, extended beyond those concerns.

Our parents had a close circle of friends, other young couples in Nichols. Bif and I went up and down Huntington Turnpike, and talked about the people we grew up with and their kids. Their shared experiences included learning life’s lessons during the Great Depression and fighting a great war, raising families and building schools, bike trips on Nantucket and family summers on Cape Cod. Bob and Louise Dunning, Dick and Barbara Sargent, Les and Shirley Nothanagle, Mae West, Dave Peck, the Flemming's with their eight kids, Bif remembered everyone.

Then there was the Milford Yacht Club, our memories of the countless summer weekends when we campaigned our Lightning up and down Long Island Sound and our sailing friends, Wayne Brockett, the life guards and sailing instructors who Dad had a hand in hiring. He spearheaded the first World Championship for the Lightning class in Milford, and that opened up the opportunity for him and mother to travel to Italy and Peru. When we talked about Ned and Emily Daly, their sons Ned and Jerry, he had me pick up the phone and call Ned Junior.

From the days of Ireland Heat Treating on the Post Road, we talked of his many loyal workers, his long-term secretary, Hilda Graff, who was almost part of our family, and the men who’d encouraged Dad to go out on his own.

We drifted in and out of this conversation over the three days we spent together. For more than 60 years I believed a story I made up: that my Dad was distant, that just because we’d had a difficult time communicating (and of course that was entirely his fault, not mine), that Dad was somehow self-absorbed and not really in touch.

Nothing could have been farther from the truth.

He remembered details that I’d entirely forgotten or never heard before. But what really astonished me was the level of feeling, the kindness and compassion in his recollections. He talked of the happy events and the sad moments, the setbacks as well as the accomplishments in a way that made them present. It was so clear that he cherished these men and women. As we talked I could see his face change. I felt his admiration for their successes, sadness for their losses, and gratitude for their friendship. I can also tell you that if there was any funny story about any of the people we talked about, he told it with his gentle laugh and bright smile. That weekend he gave me a real gift—himself.

When I talk to my friends about my father, they are amazed that he lived such a long life, and that it was such a happy and rich life right to the end. They ask, “What was his secret?” Those of us who were close to him know that he was not perfect by any means, that he had his share of disappointments and sorrows, but when I look at his life for an antidote to life’s sufferings I marvel at the wonderful way he connected with so many people, accepting and treating everyone with an even hand, balanced with good humor and love.

The House that Aristotle built and Aquinas renovated.

“You were not there for the beginning. You will not be there for the end. Your knowledge of what is going on can only be superficial and relative”

William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch

As a Jesuit seminarian, I was assiduously trained in the rigid theological argumentation designed during the Counter Reformation to win the battle for the Roman hierarchy in a Christian world that was falling apart, burning dissidents, brainwashing its children, and dividing up the spoils of war. It didn’t take a lot of deep discernment to wean me from the inhumanity of that program although it seemed difficult at the time, but, after all that training, it is difficult to step outside the rational/philosophic construct and not apply it without discrimination to all sides of an argument.

The house that Aristotle built forms the basis for the modern scientific method: observation, analysis particularly with regard to logic and causation and its application to the vast array of human endeavors. Aquinas, the precocious boy monk, took the whole lot and applied it to his world, which included the divine. He called his most famous work The Summa Theologica, The Summa for short as if including god was simply understood not just in his world view but the view of his entire world. This is the point that I find most troublesome, though unavoidable given the time and place of 13th century ecclesial scholasticism.

The house that Aquinas built was logical and rational until it wasn’t. Its foundation was set firmly on pillars of an Unmoved Mover; the doors, their hinges and locks were based on what he called sciencia, knowing or grasping the real causes of the universal nature of things; our movement within this structure is governed by our human will which allows us to conform to god’s law, whether expressed through his or her commandments as well as “natural law,” or the distinctive way rational beings participate in this eternal law. God’s law, natural, eternal or divine, always gets top billing.

The dispute I want to tackle has a long and revered lineage in Western philosophy: what happens to religion when confronted with what feels like the harsh challenges of the scientific venture and the completely natural world that it models? Aquinas applied Aristotle to the divine in an almost deistic way until he smashed up against the Deposit of Faith, the revealed Word of God that ended with the death of the last disciple of Jesus. Aquinas and all the schoolmen who followed form the framework of this continuing debate. They repeated the basic flaw--debris from Aquinas’s collision with Revelation litters the house of Aristotle. They claimed that their analysis started with observation of the universe, but it was Revelation that lay at the core of its being. Aquinas famously wrote, “if anything is found in the words of the philosophers that is contrary to the faith, this is not philosophy but rather an abuse of philosophy, due to a failure of reason” (Comm. Boethius De trinitate 2.3c).

I'm not even certain how much support I can muster for my position. Aquinas stated that the basis of his theology was “faith seeking understanding.” In only two decades he raced through all the known works and commentaries of Aristotle and left 8 million exacting words of his own. We had only a year or two to master the basics of his arguments, and it was mind numbing. But in retrospect, I am left with a sense of wonder and enthusiasm as he leapt from connection to insight and the world fell together in a very ordered way. He might have actually felt that he was discovering the divine plan. Understanding was his goal. The separation between the work of theology and philosophy was not as clear as it is today, and the observables in his quest included the phenomena of the natural world and the words of scripture. It was OK when there was no contradiction, but when there was the choice was either mysticism or the kind of rational agnosticism that would be born in the Enlightenment Period.

To further complicate the issue, the leaky basement in Aquinas’s house where observed evidence floated along side dogma, is simply a logical variation of the question that the Jesuits faced when they were crafting the Counter-Reformation although we have to change the predicate; what happens when a tradition laden and wealthy religious establishment is confronted with the harsh challenges of a reform movement, based on valid complaints about doctrine and practice that is gaining in popularity? The Jesuits took the structure of Aquinas’s house and created an inquiry, with particular emphasis on the function of free will. They even decorated the central office with an austere motif that screamed “Te Vult.”

But in terms of my analogy, I have changed the predicate. In the place of scientific venture I have substituted an entrenched doctrinal faith system, and in place of natural world models, I have placed a popular reform movement. I think this is legitimate. The questions bleed into one another muddying the waters. Let me explain.

Looking at the question of the reconciliation between a religious world view and what religionists label materialism with all of the pejorative connotations, I say it is simply a modeling of the world solely on experiential data. It only allows observable data. It is not the same game that Aquinas started in his attempt to reconcile Aristotle with Revelation. That’s a dead horse. Most of the people who represent this train of thought while maintaining a religious world view, call it the death of god in one form or another. It is the inevitable result when you remove the items in the Deposit of Faith that in themselves cannot stand up to the application of observation or verifiable historical confirmation and logic--the Trinity, the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection. The supernatural bits.

Let me shift the context of my argument to my own religious practice. Trying to pinpoint my basic problem with the problem, I have been looking for a good analogy for my conundrum, no I’ll say it, fault, in the argument that somehow the Judeo-Christian-Muslim pantheon in whatever guise, can be imported into Buddhist practice, and that this is possible, or necessary, or, well just inevitable given that we human beings carry around these notions of an active supernatural world as if that in itself makes it so--or even a decent place to begin the debate. We can describe Buddhism as “pretty non-supernatural,” but somehow the gods creep into the Buddhist world. I mean, how many Buddhist pantheons are there? Quite a few. They may be slightly different, some are even more colorful, more magical and chock full of more superstition than their western counterparts so give me a break.

At first I thought that my problem might fall into a quasi-Aristotelian conundrum: We have clear evidence, tons of careful research and analysis, historical, cultural, linguistic, that shows without a shadow of a doubt that humankind has attributed much of the world's causation to some divine intervention or interference. Not to be squandered but how do we hold it? Along comes Buddhism, I sit down and begin an inquiry based on introspection, and realize that most of this narrative is self-created, historically, culturally, linguistically, perhaps even genetically, but it’s there. A seemingly solid block that I have to consider, but looking at this data does not require anything else than I consider it part of our inheritance.

What do I object to and why do I object? With bows to both Descartes and Hume. Up until the advent of philosophical skepticism, the job of the philosopher was to reconcile the worlds of faith and the seemingly disparate world of reason. If you did a convincing job creating a creditable resolution, you got tenure at a really great world class university like Padua or even were made a saint. But the problem for me still remains: what if Zeus, Jehovah, The Ground of Being, the Atman are just an elaborate ponzi scheme devised to maintain the power of a particular worldview? But but but you say, the evidence is there: people have these experiences that we cannot fathom without this explanatory construct. Let’s look at the constructs and see what holds water--so to speak.

It seems to me that whether or not the supernatural exists is a binary choice, yes or no, and not a multiple choice answer with various levels rated from 0 to 9. After we’ve done away with our anthropomorphic thinking, this ‘realm’ or level of reality is entirely beyond human reasoning; it stands outside ordinary experience, and (we posit) exists in some sense. Or do we take our experience of the numinous and use “supernatural" to describe certain parts that we can’t really figure out as if there were multiple choices about the level of supernatural that we choose to describe these kinds of experience. Is truth a popularity contest read by professional pollsters? Whether I rate myself as a 2 with regard to transcendence or a 9--transcendence, that level of reality is defined as either whole and complete in itself and not subject to human intervention, or it is an human invention used as convenient descriptor for those portions of what we seem to hear, feel, and talk about that escape the bounds of our ordinary experience and language as well as the scientific instruments that we have developed to get a handle on what we call “the inexplicable.” A good example is the data collected by Galileo’s telescope, the wrench he threw into the theological cosmology of the 15th century.

This is the phenomena of questions bleeding into one another muddying the waters. When you begin an argument or analysis with a sympathetic description of some famous figure dealing with the intrusion of an inexplicable experience which the person identifies as numinous or “supernatural,” the question is already muddy. I say (actually I am borrowing much of it from a broad reading of post Enlightenment skeptics, Descartes onward), this is the least profitable place to start: the examination of religious thought and literature as well as those remarkable humans who had powerful numinous experiences working within those systems. Of course it will be self-referential. That is how our minds are constructed.

The shape of the question determines the outcome. Any answer has to account for the context that the subject used to frame his or her question. Methodist founder John Wesley famously remarked in a pamphlet about the Calvinist interpretation of Romans 9 “Whatever it means, it cannot mean that.” I read this and said to myself, Wesley was a Zen master? It pretty much reflects much of how I feel about the letters attributed to Paul, more than a few other bits in the Jesus narrative as well as many statements in systematic theology.

So let’s begin afresh. Put the cart before the horse (I don’t think it makes any difference if it’s the other way around), but please subject the contents of the cart to the same careful scrutiny that you gave to Zeus and Jesus, Father and Spirit. Or better yet, examine who is entertaining these fanciful creations.

Go back to your meditation cushion.

Perhaps I have fashioned an answer to a problem that wasn’t even there. And maybe it is just nonsense. Damn there goes that tenure. Aquinas too chose the mystical path.

Mihi videtur ut palea

Father Nolan’s baritone would have made a camel blush

But he launched into “Tantum Ergo”

With the enthusiasm of an Irish barroom brawl.

He was tone deaf 

Bringing the mystery of all things transcendent

Down to earth where mere mortals can fight about them.

Brawls with priests in attendance are nothing new

And not usually a laughing matter.

Choirmaster trains with a whip

No mercy for wayward lads.
Nolan was deadly serious.

I was once on his list.

Aquinas tried to complete the work

Of Nicaea. Truly god is truly god.

True means true. It means

When you bite the coin

It cracks your teeth.

Breath that rattles straw.

More straw please.

San Francisco Has Lost Its Soul

I have been in a lot of pain watching the situation on the streets of San Francisco from afar. I have been turning the situation over in my head more than I should. I have a couple of reactions. I watched a YouTube video from inside a car crossing Market at 6th, a route I’ve taken many times. There weren't just a few, but hundreds of addicts on the street, shooting up, nodding off, trading drugs. From what I could read, the drug was probably Fentanyl. Nasty shit. I was shocked, and I know a few things about street drugs.

Some local business owners want the city to close U.N. Plaza, which is overrun with illegal activity, including vending.

I’ve been there. Let’s call it what it is. Step 1. This is full blown addiction. It’s unmanageable. It’s out of control. It’s causing immense harm. Everyone, from the hard assed cynic to the bleeding heart liberal is powerless. Now let’s be clear, I am not in favor of taking the city through the 12 Steps, and I have lots of problems with the system anyway. But it is how I got sober and at least part of the background for my reaction.

There are lots of possible causes: a massive explosion in the homeless population, the exit of high tech and the resulting economic downturn, the massive disparity in wealth, the lack of savvy leadership. But fuck it, in my recovery it wasn’t that I was lonely or poor or weird, although all that was also probably true. It was the drugs. No matter who is painting the picture or analyzing the problem, don’t lose track of the fact that it’s the fucking drugs.

But then I had a kind of revelation. How did I get sober? Just the steps weren’t enough. Not even close. I also had a vision of what my life could be. Maybe I’d hidden it away. Maybe I’d forgotten it. Maybe my cynical side didn’t believe it, but I knew I was living in the shadows. There was more to life than crystal meth.

San Francisco has had a vision. At least it used to. It was the gateway to the Gold Rush, the Golden Gate. It was Gold Mountain for the Cantonese whose indentured servitude was really just a new version of slavery prohibited after the Civil War. It was the Heart of Golden West, the coast where America built defenses to fight the Great War in the Pacific. It was the place where soldiers and sailors returning from the Guadalcanal and Corregidor disembarked and began to recreate their lives rather than going back to the empty prairies and plains between the coasts

San Francisco has also been known as The City on a Hill, Gay Mecca, Baghdad by the Bay though I could never really figure out why Baghdad, but that was Herb Caen and he came from Sacramento and he was just a newspaper hack so what the hell did he know anyway? It sounded cute. Jack Kerouac called it Frisco thus ever planting him as an outsider. It was a safe haven for the Beat Generation. Ginsberg read Howl in the Western Addition. It changed the face of American literature all the way to the Supreme Court when that meant something. It even helped us define what we can do with language. Mr. Justice [Holmes] said: “A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged. It is the skin of living thought and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and the time in which it is used.”

Part of the vision of what was possible in San Francisco--if you don’t like it, then change it, and change yourselves in the process.

As a San Franciscan for most of my adult life, I know it as the place where the Stonewall Revolution met middle class gay life in a way that changed the political and social landscape forever as well as provided the testing ground for its cohesion during a horrific and tragic public health crisis. That required vision and leadership. Many, but one man in particular, Harvey Milk, rose to the occasion at great personal cost and the GLBTQ community never looked back. That took vision of what was possible against all odds.

The fight against HIV/AIDS was actually longer in terms of San Francisco history, and much more costly in terms of deaths and dollars. Because for more than a decade AIDS was a certain death sentence, it was also an existential crisis for so many friends and comrades. Very difficult terrain. But over time, with an enormous amount of self sacrifice by far too many people, including prodding an underfunded medical research community, there was a real breakthrough.

The problems are huge. The addictive properties of Fentanyl are 500 times more extreme than any other street drugs that have ever been available. The population affected is less educated, articulate and organized than the mostly gay men and women who fought AIDS or rallied for political clout.

The political leadership is simply not equal to the task. But London Breed isn’t the real problem is she? She may be totally corrupt and a complete idiot, but it’s too easy to lay the blame for a completely hopeless situation at her feet, or any feet other than my own. A lot of people are doing that. But she does seem to be adrift.

What has happened to San Francisco? 38,000 individuals in the Bay Area are homeless, an increase of 35 percent since 2019. San Francisco Mayor London Breed wants to carve out $692.6 million in homelessness spending next year to help meet the city's five-year plan to cut homelessness in half. That’s roughly 18,000 a year per person. But currently my sources tell me that a homeless person in San Francisco can receive up to $10,000 in benefits. This is no longer assistance but an incentive.

Someone said that circumstances have created the “perfect storm,” the flood of drugs and the increase in vulnerable populations would defy Wonder Woman. Difficult, yes. This person also mentioned that treatment “beds” are empty, in other words that there are opportunities for addicts seeking treatment to receive professional intervention, but no one wants to get sober. Perhaps this is true. But even after highlighting the problem in 2019, Breed just this month figured out that there might be an easily accessible database to direct case managers, addicts, to these empty “beds,” possible life saving treatments.

The existing nonprofits and substance abuse agencies are bloated, ineffectual and stretched too thin. I just counted 15 free treatment programs, 28 inpatient drug & alcohol rehab centers, 51 outpatient, plus 23 detox centers in the Bay Area, that’s more than 100 separate agencies listed online serving various populations. I appreciate the need for programs suited to an addict’s needs, but you’re not going to convince me that the duplicate administrative costs, already high, as well as multiple development departments chasing the same dollars to run their programs are not draining resources.

Businesses, homeowners and others with a stake in the outcome have been pushed beyond any reasonable limits. Market Street is now almost completely shuttered. San Francisco’s tourism business of more than 8 billion dollars is going to take a massive hit. Friends who still live in San Francisco tell me that they feel at risk whenever they venture outside.

Who is at fault and who has the power to do anything? The blame game is fun when we really haven’t got a clue about what to do, but really, does that do anything to even begin to alleviate the dire situation? No.

Wes ‘Scoop’ Nisker said,“If you don't like the news, go out and make some of your own.”

I am confident that San Francisco can create a vision that will save its soul. The situation seems extreme, but not insurmountable. It seems to me that the missing piece is a vision of what is possible.