Leland Tea Company update

I've been into the Leland Tea Company a couple of more times since my original post about it, including taking Mom there for lunch during her recent visit. I love some of the custom teas that Will has created. I tried Greys Kelly last time I was there (Earl Grey mixed with lavender) and am looking forward to the witty Me Love Oolong Time blend. :-)

A new indie flick, City on a Hill, recently filmed a couple of scenes there. Sounds interesting.

TerraPass now offering CO2 offsets for air travel

TerraPass has joined a number of other companies in selling carbon dioxide offsets for air travel. They've teamed up with Expedia and have an emissions calculator that allows you to determine how much CO2 your flight will produce and then purchase an appropriate TerraPass to offset those emissions.

I'm flying to New York next week for a fitness training workshop and bought a TerraPass for $9.95 to offset the nearly 2000 pounds of CO2 that my seat on the flight will produce.

The Meatrix II

Check out The Meatrix II, the sequel to the original Meatrix video. This new animated film reveals what goes on in large, industrial dairy factories.

1,000 miracles a day

Busy busy busy! What a couple of weeks I've had!

This past weekend I was in my second life coaching course, CTI's Fulfillment. What an awesome course and group of participants. In the Fundamentals class I took back in July, there were a number of people that were just testing the life coaching waters. This time the class was filled with people who have made a choice to pursue a coaching career, and that commitment really showed up in the coaching exercises we did together.

As an exploration of our personal values, we did a guided visualization where we imagined ourselves visiting the home of our future self 20 years down the road. We did the visualization twice. The first time I got a clear picture of a home sitting on a low hill that was lushly landscaped with tropical plants. The house had a courtyard and was filled with light. I had a sense that it was a gathering place, a place where people came together for conversation, for planning, for fun. And I got some sense of who my future self was. When I was asked what name my future self was known by other than my given name, the word Leader came to mind.

The second time we did the visualization, I was actually able to see my future self... a 60 year old version of me. It was like seeing my face morphed with that of my maternal grandfather's. And it wasn't that bad... I got that it was okay to grow old. My face was happy. I had gray hair on my chest. My nipples were still pierced. :-) Best of all, my future self had wisdom to share with me when I asked him questions: will I find a true partner? what path should I take?

When the visualization ended this second time, I found myself very sad until the woman leading the exercise told us we could return at any time. Somehow it is comforting now to know that I have that place--and that sense of my future self--to return to whenever I choose.

Overall the course was amazing. I love what life coaching is opening up for me, and I have a sense of having found my passion. What's more... I'm going to be good at it; throughout the weekend I received such wonderful acknowledgment from many people in the course. We did an exercise where we got into two lines facing each other, acknowledged the person across from us for three minutes, and then rotated, repeating this seven or eight times. How great it was to get to tell people what I admired about them... and to open myself in turn to hearing what in me people wanted to acknowledge.

And so I'm starting my coaching business. I have two sample sessions scheduled for this week with potential clients, and I'm having another session with a woman whom I may take on as my own coach for the next few months. This new adventure is coming into reality!

THE WEEKEND BEFORE MY MOTHER WAS IN TOWN for the third weekend of the Wisdom Course. She's taking the course in Denver and came out to share this particular weekend with me.

I got so much out of the weekend. I am coaching the course and on the team responsible for grading the participants' coursework: a display of the people they regularly communicate with, an autobiography, and collages. Friday we had some breakdowns: there were some surprises to which we had to adapt and some breakdowns in procedure. With roughly 200 participants and eight to ten pieces of coursework per participant, there were a lot of items to be handled. The three of us accountable for getting the coursework graded by the coaching team were told that we had "failed."

I left the course that night committed to not getting on it about that statement, but as I got into bed I was totally in my head about it and unable to sleep. I woke on Saturday expecting a long, unpleasant day: I would arrive at the host hotel at 8am and be there until 11pm.

Instead something else showed up. I chose to live inside the idea that all was well. We had a coaching meeting in the morning and got really straight with each other about what was and was not working. Out of that we came together as a team and made great progress throughout the day, in the process growing and developing ourselves.

What opened up for me was an ability to really hear the course participants that I'm coaching. In a conversation with one of them that was occurring for me as an argument, I suddenly stopped resisting and just heard what was being communicated to me. In that moment I got how committed I was to having this person in front of me get a new life out of the course. And standing in that place, I was able to speak in a way that had my participant feeling understood.

It was an intense conversation, but it opened the world for me. I was left with a feeling of love for everyone in the course.

That night we had a community and social event attended by the everyone in the course as well as their guests. Tony came as my guest, and I got to introduce Mom as my guest as well which meant so much to me: "Who you are for me, Mom, is art, generosity, and from beginning to end, love."

On the way home, I was talking to Tony outside my car when a homeless man asked me for money. My wallet was in my car, and I told him I didn't have any. I returned to my conversation with Tony for 10 to 15 seconds, and then I realized I was full of shit. I went to the car, got my wallet, and gave the man $5. He reached into his bag and pulled out a drawing and gave it to me, humbling me with his generosity and acknowledgment. And for the first time in my life, I hugged a homeless man.

For a second night, I had difficulty sleeping. But this time the culprit was excitement. I literally couldn't wait to get back to the course the next day. I couldn't wait to be back with that community of people who were committed to making a difference in the world.

The course was great on Sunday. Mom and I were going to see Love, Janis immediately afterwards, and I collected my things to go. I had to walk about 50 feet to get to the escalator, and in that space I encountered 20 or 25 people. Some wanted to thank me for what I had done during the weekend. Some were people that I wanted to acknowledge. Some had lost their coursework and were upset... and relieved when I took the time to help them find it. Some wanted to share breakthroughs they had had.

And there it was... I got why I choose to contribute to this wonderful Wisdom community. I got why I get on the phone for the conference calls and the conversations with my participants. I got why I'm going to all of the five three-day weekends and the team training days and the coursework parties. It's because when these people get together, I am so present to witnessing 1,000 miracles a day happening around me.

And thinking back to that homeless man on the street, I also got that having a life filled with miracles every day only takes a simple choice, only takes a moment, only takes that short journey which sometimes seems so desperately long: stepping outside of one's self and into the world of another.

A victory for the 4th Amendment... stay tuned

A federal judge in Detroit ruled that the NSA's domestic surveillance program violates the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution:

“There are no hereditary kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution,” she wrote, rejecting what she called the administration’s assertion that the president “has been granted the inherent power to violate not only the laws of the Congress but the First and Fourth Amendments of the Constitution itself.”

And Mark Green discusses the factors that are endanger our democracy on The Huffington Post.

An energy future beyond carbon

The special September issue of Scientific American focuses on "how to power the economy and still fight global warming." It provides a concrete set of steps, including conservation, and a set of technologies to stabilize atmospheric CO2 concentration and thus limit the impact of global warming. Articles address both what we can do immediately and proposals for the longer term. The issue provides a "manual" for repairing our climate, but putting it into action will require governments--and particularly our own--to take leadership in bringing about the changes necessary to protect our planet.

Pick up a copy or read it online, share what you learn, encourage your representatives to take action, and keep the magazine in mind when you vote!

Table of contents

• Introduction: A Climate Repair Manual
• Strategy: A Plan to Keep Carbon in Check
• Automotive Answers: Fueling our Transportation Future
• Energy Efficiency: An Efficient Solution
• Carbon Capture and Storage: What to Do about Coal
• Role for Fission: The Nuclear Option
• Clean Power: The Rise of Renewable Energy
• Fuel Cells and More: High Hopes for Hydrogen
• Speculative Technology: Plan B for Energy

Bits and pieces

I ran across Kurt Cobb's interesting "Is just-in-time nearly out of time?" blogpost; it paints a compelling picture of the dangers of living in a just-in-time world where businesses have minimal inventories... and a minimal ability to react in a time of crisis. And he extends the concern to how individual Americans would cope in a time of crisis:

There is an interesting resonance here between the "just-in-time" delivery of manufacturing inputs and retail stock and the modern tendency to keep essentially no food in one's home. It's a joke on TV shows and movies about bachelors and young moderns, but a great many people really do have nothing in their fridges but a six-pack of beer and a jar of mustard and nothing in their cupboard but half a bag of cookies and a couple of Cup-O-Noodles. They depend on take-out food, restaurants, their more provident friends' larders, and heaven help them, vending machines.

If the restaurants are not open because no food has been delivered, if the pizza take-out isn't delivering because there is no gasoline (and no pizza), and the vending machines have all been stripped bare by other hungry people, then these "grasshoppers" only resource is their friends. Desperation is just around the corner.

WHILE THE BUSH TEAM PLAYS POLITICS with the disruption of the terrorist plot to bring down airliners with liquid explosives, the TSA ignores advice from internal experts, one of whom predicted just such an approach a year ago:

"Next time the terrorists might put explosives in toothpaste tubes, and you can count on TSA screeners squishing out all the toothpaste from passengers' bags."

Well, we can expect that sports drinks and hair gel will now be permanently banned. This was what the British terrorists planned to use to disguise the explosives.

Read more here. Also, listen to Thomas Kean, chairman of the 9/11 Commission, speak on Fresh Air about his new book, Without Precedent: the Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission.

A RETIRED CIA ANALYST SHARES his thinking on whether the U.S. is headed toward war with Iran. And Michael Ventura of The Austin Chronicle ponders the conflict in Lebanon as well as Israel's long term security.

AND FROM THE WORLD OF BIOLOGY, a parasite that can affect an individual's personality (and the culture of an entire country!) and a bacteria that infects insects and can even change their sex to improve its own odds of survival.


ANOTHER STORY ON THE DANGERS of genetic engineering of agricultural crops, this time from Hawaii where experiments were run to produce drugs and vaccines from altered strains of corn and sugar cane. A federal court ruled that the USDA provided insufficient oversight to prevent contamination of native plants, saying their "utter disregard for this simple investigation requirement, especially given the extraordinary number of endangered and threatened plants and animals in Hawaii, constitutes an unequivocal violation of a clear congressional mandate."

AND FINALLY A GREAT QUOTE from an American patriot:

'Tis surprising to see how rapidly a panic will sometimes run through a country. All nations and ages have been subject to them.... Yet panics, in some case, have their uses; they produce as much good as hurt. Their duration is always short; the mind soon grows through them, and acquires a firmer habit than before. But their peculiar advantage is, that they are the touchstones of sincerity and hypocrisy, and bring things and men to light, which might otherwise have lain forever undiscovered.... They sift out the hidden thoughts of man, and hold them up in public to the world.

-- COMMON SENSE, The American Crisis, No. I, Thomas Paine, 1776

Images from the seventh grade

I was reminded today of two conversations I had in Costa Rica. One I had already shared with some friends back here in San Francisco; the other might have slipped away from me completely if my friend Lionel hadn't triggered a memory of it today. Both conversations took me back 27 years to junior high. And both gave me new insights into the events that have followed.

The first conversation I shared with John on the beach at our resort. John made a comment about certain events having the ability to shift the arc of our lives, and the image that flashed into my mind was of a certain dance in the 7th grade. Despite it being one of my first, I don't recall anticipating it with any particular anxiety. I do remember having to lie on the ground to zip up what are quite probably the tightest pair of (white) pants I've ever owned (yes, it was '78 or '79 :-).

I was pure geek at that point in my life with glasses and a mess of hair, but I had always gotten along well with girls, even having had to fight them off the summer before at science camp while swimming in the pool one day. Another boy in the showerhouse had asked me my secret... I had no idea. Of course, it was likely that it was simply that I was a young gay man in the making and--with no designs on them--totally unthreatening to those girls.

At the dance I had already asked Terri (name changed to #1 protect the innocent and #2 because I don't really remember!) to dance once, and after the requisite return to the "boys area," I was heading in her direction to ask her a second time. Then it happened: she caught sight of my approaching her, cringed, and tried to hide behind another girl.

That was all it took. I decided in that moment I was a loser when it came to love, romance, dancing... everything that that awkward night now represented. To save face I went up to Terri and blurted out something, trying to leave the impression that I'd only walked over to share some piece of information.

Eight years later I came out, and six years after that I began some serious clubbing. One space in particular, 177 Townsend, the home of Club Universe and Pleasuredome, became my weekend home. From the summer of 1993 until the building was torn down in the summer of 2002, I danced at 177 at least three weekends a month. I gradually developed from the innocent kid wearing Don't Panic t-shirts to a circuit professional. And along the way, I developed a bold confidence in that space that allowed me to approach and proposition just about anyone that I wanted.

John's comment about how an event can alter what comes after gave me this insight: those years at 177 were about more than just having fun. They also were a symbolic, though unconscious, effort to undo the pain and embarassment of that 7th grade dance. I chased all of the "yes's" to chip away at that one big "no" that had followed me after that night.

And writing this I have another insight: I'm lying. Terri never said "no" because I never asked her. I saw something on her face and decided it meant "no," and rather than risk finding out for sure, I took myself out of the game for many years.

The second conversation followed from the "no secrets" discussion that I referred to in my "Communication" post. I had been talking to my friend Dolly about this idea of living without secrets, and one of the reasons I gave was that, looking back, I could see how much pain and suffering had resulted from my keeping secrets. One example was my keeping hidden for so many years that I was gay.

I saw Brian McNaught's "Growing Up Gay and Lesbian" on public television in the mid-90s. In the program McNaught said something that had never occurred to me yet had the ring of truth for my own life. Gay and lesbian kids often grow up, he said, keeping secret the fact that they feel different, that they are finding themselves attracted to others of their own gender. Unlike other minorities, gay and lesbian kids don't normally grow up in households where their parents are members of the same minority. And even though those gay and lesbian kids usually feel loved by their families, they may carry the fear that if their parents and siblings knew their secret, then they would no longer be loved. Years later after having come out, they may still find difficulty in accepting love, having learned as an adolescent to fear that love might disappear if they let themselves be fully known.

I first became aware that I was attracted to boys when I entered the 7th grade and for the first time was eligible to participate in organized sports at school. Football practice began a few days before the school year kicked off, and while no one told me that I had to join the team, I had the sense that it was the thing that boys did and that I ought to go out.

I arrived late that first morning and had to run a lap as punishment. While a pretty decent runner, I wasn't particularly coordinated at that age and suffered through the rest of the session, then headed to the locker room with the rest of the boys. Once there I again had a moment when everything shifted. Everyone else took off their gear, undressed, and headed for the showers, but I found my eyes drifting to some of the eighth graders and their more developed--more manly--bodies.

And just as I did a few months later at that dance, I decided something in an instant that swung the course of my life. I decided that I didn't fit in, that I was different, and that I had to hide those facts. I decided that I couldn't let myself get too close to those boys, and the men that would follow, because I couldn't let them know my secret. Without undressing or showering, I bolted from the locker room and headed home.

When I came out I was at last able to begin to break down that barrier to intimacy with men, but only with those who were gay. Straight men--nearly half the world's population--remained off limits as friends. If I act to friendly, I thought, they'll misunderstand and think that I'm interested in them. In 2003 I participated in Landmark's Transforming Yesterday's Strategies course and distinguished for myself that I had made this all up, that no one had told me I didn't belong, that there was no banner saying so. But still, somehow, I was at fault. Had I been smarter or stronger or something I wouldn't have hidden in the first place.

After sharing this all with Dolly, she said something that gave me a whole new perspective: "What you did, Michael, was a perfectly appropriate thing to have done. Growing up in a small town in the Midwest in the 70s, not hiding that you were gay might have put yourself in danger."

Oh. So maybe there was nothing wrong with what I did. No one had ever said that to me before, and it had never occurred to me. Instead of lacking courage maybe I had simply chosen wisely. And in speaking to Lionel today I realized something else: what I did do, as soon as I could, was get myself to the San Francisco Bay Area where it was safe to take the next step as a gay man. And in doing so I got to come out on my terms. When I stepped off the plane in Kansas for my first visit home after telling my parents I was gay, my mother told me that I was standing taller than she had ever seen me, and she knew in that moment that everything was okay.

And knowing my secret, my family still loves me. As for Terry, I hope she's found as much happiness as I have.

But I bet I'm a better dancer. :-)

Fat notes

Years ago, in a misguided effort to improve my health, I went on a fat free diet for about a year. As it turned out, it was the sickest year of my life; I suffered a bout with shingles and a variety of other unusual ailments. My doctor even suggested an HIV test.

Luckily I ran across an article about fat that listed the various critical roles it plays in the body. One of them was maintenance of a healthy immune system, and after ditching the diet, my good health returned.

Lesson learned. Since then I've found out a lot about the differences between good fats (e.g. monounsaturated and polyunsaturated) and bad fats (e.g. trans fatty acids) and their impact on cholestrol and cardiovascular health. And I read Gary Taubes' fascinating article, "The Soft Science of Dietary Fat," which presents a far more complex picture of how fats affect us than can be easily represented in the FDA's food pyramid.

To understand where this complexity can lead in a simple example, consider a steak--to be precise, a porterhouse, select cut, with a half-centimeter layer of fat, the nutritional constituents of which can be found in the Nutrient Database for Standard Reference at the USDA Web site. After broiling, this porterhouse reduces to a serving of almost equal parts fat and protein. Fifty-one percent of the fat is monounsaturated, of which virtually all (90%) is oleic acid, the same healthy fat that's in olive oil. Saturated fat constitutes 45% of the total fat, but a third of that is stearic acid, which is, at the very least, harmless. The remaining 4% of the fat is polyunsaturated, which also improves cholesterol levels. In sum, well over half--and perhaps as much as 70%--of the fat content of a porterhouse will improve cholesterol levels compared to what they would be if bread, potatoes, or pasta were consumed instead. The remaining 30% will raise LDL but will also raise HDL. All of this suggests that eating a porterhouse steak rather than carbohydrates might actually improve heart disease risk, although no nutritional authority who hasn't written a high-fat diet book will say this publicly.

The bottom line for improving your health is to pair some common sense (e.g. eat a variety of fresh foods that have been minimally processed) with some knowledge about how specific foods impact the human body (e.g. most plant oils are high in healthy fats; human-engineered fats like partially hydrogenated oils are bad in any amount).

I read a couple of recent articles about fat that I found interesting. The first describes research which shows that many beneficial nutrients, such as beta carotene and lutein, are much better absorbed when consumed with some fat. The second reports on a study that shows how quickly a single meal can affect--for better or worse--cardiovascular health.

UPDATE

I posted a few days ago about misleading stories and video ("If it's good enough for Iraq it's good enough for America"). An article in Harper's magazine provides a fascinating look at how one company placed articles written by the U.S. military in Iraqi newspapers... and wasted huge amounts of tax payer money in the process. Check out Willem Marx's "Misinformation Intern" when the September issue hits the newsstands.

A quote which discusses the company's role in producing some television spots for the U.S.:

We found one company that would produce one of our half-minute TV spots for as little as $10,000. At Iraq's national station, Al Iraqiya, located with Baghdad's old Jewish ghetto, an English-speaking commercial director said he could air the spot during the station's nightly news, the most expensive time, for only $2,000. Production and distribution, then, would cost us around $12,000. The amount Lincoln Group was charging the military for developing, producing, and airing each commercial had already been determined: just over $1 million.

Strong words from the Philly Daily News

Wow, an awesome editorial from the Philadelphia Daily News. It takes Bush and Cheney to task for saying Connecticut voters aided Al Qaeda by voting against Lieberman.

Teddy... a champion!

I am so proud of my friend Teddy Tran, who I like to call my godson. He returned from the Gay Games in Chicago two weeks ago with three medals: a gold in the pole vault, a silver in the mixed medley relay, and a bronze in the 4x100 meter relay. Teddy was competing as part of Team SF.

Teddy said he was most proud of the bronze; he and his teammates were bumped down to the more competitive 18-29 age bracket, and they did much better than expected.

The other runners on the 4x100: David Rourke, Mark Fernandez, and Sothea Hien.

And the mixed medley: Pete Myers, Catherine Murty, and Sonia Smith.

You, go!

Communication

Sometimes... or always... communication is the hardest thing in the world. Or maybe it's not and we just make it hard. Maybe I just make it hard.

Sometimes I simply want to express what I want. I believe that there's nothing wrong with any of us wanting what we want. And then I try to go and share what it is that I want and something else altogether comes out, something constrained and filtered by how I think the other person will hear it.

It feels like I can't win.

On the one hand, I entered into an inquiry in Costa Rica: what would my life be like if I never kept another secret again? In that conversation I was very present to how much pain and suffering follow from keeping secrets, both in my life and in the lives of people from whom I hide things. What if I simply shared what I was thinking? What if I simply disclosed what actions I had taken? And I'm not talking about saying everything I think and do to everyone I meet; rather, we all know when we are withholding, when we are not saying something when there is an opening in front of us to say it. So what if I never shied away from those openings?

I realize that living that way might mean that certain people chose not to be with me, chose not to have relationships with me. But at least there would never be anything between us, none of the rot that sets in and spreads in a relationship when things aren't said.

And on the other hand, I care about people. I don't want to hurt them. It's easy to rationalize not hurting them now because the pain down the road--like getting old or the effects of global warming--is intangible. And, just possibly, I'll wriggle off the hook.

But it comes back to this in relationships with people, and in communication: there is only now. There is only this once chance to say something cleanly; to not obscure what we want with the reasons we conjure up for why we want it.

Better to just say it... or is it? I don't know. And like all of life, I suspect there is no answer.

Just a day followed by a day, a conversation followed by a conversation, the ongoing effort to be in this world and share ourselves with others that never ends.

Until it does.

Support a cease-fire in Lebanon?

Oxfam has started a campaign to urge President Bush and Secretary of State Rice to push for a cease-fire in Lebanon. To add your support, click here.

Of the two, Rice may be the easier to convince. Apparently she and Bush are having an unusual disagreement over the wisest path to forge in Lebanon, with Rice preferring to engage Syria and Iran in order to bring the conflict to an end.

I am no Hezbollah sympathizer, and I support Israel's right to defend itself. But I worry what's happening in Lebanon may fail to achieve Israel's short-term goals and will ultimately come back to bite us all. Quoting from Juan Cole's post from August 8:

... extremism has been strengthened. Lebanon is abject, on its knees, stricken with a plague inflicted on it by Bush and Olmert. The abject, the humiliated, the impoverished do not, as Bush and Olmert fondly imagine to themselves, lie down and let the mighty walk over them. They blow up skyscrapers.

The idea that the whole Eastern Mediterranean had to be polluted, that the Christian Lebanese economy had to be destroyed for the next decade or two, that 900,000 persons had to be rendered homeless, that a whole country had to be pounded into rubble because some Lebanese Shiites voted for Hizbullah in the last election, putting 12 in parliament, is obscene. Bush's glib ignorance is destroying our world. Our children will suffer for it, and perhaps our grandchildren after them.

The rule of law in service of freedom

I heard a story on NPR today about a recent speech that Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy gave to the American Bar Association. Kennedy contends that the jury is still out in the court of world opinion with respect to a commitment to the Western idea of democracy. He challenged the lawyers to move beyond a cold, rational idea of the law and instead make the case for the rule of law as something that can serve the cause of freedom. As summed up by Dahlia Lithwick in her article about the speech at Slate.com:

Perhaps this country is actually ready for what he's selling: the twin notions that the world is an enormous, embattled, struggling place and that the law has a responsibility to try to fix it. Not just in service of the Constitution, but in the service of freedom.

The speech reminded me of a movement within the legal profession that I heard about in 2003. Kim Wright, a lawyer in Portland and founder of the Renaissance Lawyer website, had shared about "law as a healing profession" at a seminar we were in; the thrust of the movement is to move beyond the adversarial aspects of the practice of law and identify ways that lawyers can instead bring people together. For more information, check out the Renaissance Lawyer page on transformational law.

If it's good enough for Iraq it's good enough for America...

While it's not clear yet who paid for the work, it appears that a YouTube video critical of An Inconvenient Truth was produced by a Republican PR firm, not by an amateur 29 year old as it was made to appear. The story is here.

I guess if it worked in Iraq, why not try it here? And while both efforts to mislead were revealed, I have to wonder how many people ever learn the truth.

And if one of the strengths of American society is our "marketplace of ideas," don't forget the old saying, "let the buyer beware." ;-)

Oil, war, oil wars... and something green

Check out this extremely interesting blog post (and the ensuing comments) on the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict in Lebanon by Juan Cole, a professor of Mideast history at the University of Michigan.

I followed a link on Cole's site to The Oil Drum, a site that addresses energy issues such as peak oil.

And to leaven all of that, here's a link to the Pachamama Alliance whose mission is to promote a global vision of living sustainably and, specifically, to preserve the world's tropical rainforests.

Love, Janis postscript

I've never caught a baseball in the stands at a game, but I did catch the guitarist's pick when it flew out of his hand during the last number at Love, Janis. :-)

Love, Janis

Recently Tony took me to the San Francisco premiere of Love, Janis, the musical that tells the story of Janis Joplin through her letters and her songs. While I was born in 1966, I had no sense of Janis' life or music going into the theater, nor any expectations for the show. A little over an hour later, the first act ended and I was barely able to get up from my seat, so powerfully was I affected by the performance in general and "Ball and Chain" in particular.

My parents were hippies in the 70s, and in a not too unusual reaction, I became a bit of an Alex Keaton child: I didn't like going to parties, I didn't like their rock music. I remember standing at Mom's side on so many nights, asking repeatedly when we were going home.

Happily, I look back at it all with nostalgia now. :-)

Love, Janis tells Janis' story by alternating between a young Janis, who reads aloud the letters that she sent home to her family in Texas during the late 60s and early 70s, and musical performances by a slightly older--and more worn--Janis. Occasionally the two Janis characters sat side-by-side on stage and conversed. Katrina Chester filled the older Janis role on opening night and wowed the audience with her emotion and energy. (For a review, check out Variety.)

I developed a new respect for how sensitive and intelligent Janis was, partly due to the influence of her father, an avid reader who shared many books with her. And I was surprised at how strongly her music affected me. But as has happened before, I was reminded that the music of that era--even when I pretended not to listen--got deep inside of me, and in hearing it 30 years later, it evokes powerful memories of childhood.

As I said, the first act ended with an emotionally intense performance of "Ball and Chain." Hearing the song, I found some closure: I had the opportunity to appreciate what as a child had been a reminder of my parents' being different.

Different. As I am.

A couple of years ago I went to a Sting and Annie Lennox concert in Portland with my friend Alex. I found myself looking around the arena, seeing many people my age, most of them heterosexually partnered. I remembered being in love with a young woman named Jane in college, and it occurred to me that I might have gone down that path: marrying Jane, raising a family. And, quite likely, never feeling fully satisfied or happy.

I realized that I learned from my parents that it was okay to be different, and if not for that, I might not have had the courage to go my own way.

I shared this with my mother, and she remarked that she had always been worried that she might have ruined my life by being a hippie. I told her that she might just have saved it by being one.

EXPERIENCING A BIT OF THE 70s THAT NIGHT, I found myself wondering how my parents transitioned from straight-laced high school kids to the counter culture hippies that I remembered. They navigated that transition in a town of 800 in the middle of Kansas. When did they begin to step outside the norm? When, for example, did my Dad grow his hair out? What was it like for them? How did friends and family react? These were questions I had never considered before, but it gave me an opening to call Dad and ask (and for the record, he began to grow his hair out in 1973 :-).

What an amazing time that Janis--and my parents--lived through. So much change. So many milestone events, including the Stonewall riots, that collectively created room for people to live in ways that hadn't been permitted before. A long overdue "thank you" is in order...

Dear Mom and Dad,

I went along kicking and screaming at times, but through the lives you led I learned that it was okay to take another path, and that has made all the difference in my life. I learned from you how to feel comfortable around all types of people. I never heard you make a racist joke or comment. You always allowed me to be me.

For all of that, and for sticking with me through everything that has happened since, thank you.

Love, Michael

New book from 9/11 commission members

The Republican head of the 9/11 Commission, Thomas Kean, and Democrat Lee Hamilton have a new book coming out on August 15 titled Without Precedent. In it, according to an AP story, they discuss some of the difficulties the panel faced in determining exactly what happened on September 11.

Quote for the day: You are a child of God

I ran across this last fall, and after spending a week with such fantastic people in Costa Rica, it seems very apropos. Marianne Williamson attributes the quote to Nelson Mandela in her book, A Return to Love.

Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate,
but that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us.
We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous,
handsome, talented and fabulous?

Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.

Your playing small does not serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking
so that other people won't feel insecure around you.

We were born to make manifest the glory of God within us.
It is not just in some; it is in everyone.

And, as we let our own light shine,
we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.

As we are liberated from our fear,
our presence automatically liberates others.

And here is another Costa Rican sunset...

Pura vida!

"Pura vida" is a phrase commonly used in Costa Rica; it translates literally as "pure life." The words embody the free spirit and love for life of the Costa Rican people.

The phrase also describes my experience there this past week. I flew to Liberia in the Guanacaste region of Costa Rica on July 26 and took the shuttle to the Paradisus Playa Conchal Resort. I quickly learned that not only were my meals included but also 24x7 room service and all of my drinks anywhere at the resort. Arriving late that night, I ordered room service and got a full-sized bottle of wine with my meal. What a nice surprise!

I was in Costa Rica for Landmark Education's Structural Connections course, one of their vacation courses available to participants in and graduates of their Wisdom course. Structural language is distinguished as the language of objects, including our bodies, and the course was designed to have the participants inquire into their own structural sentences: the ways, for example, that we sit, walk, and stand, as well as the manner in which events in our lives can come to inhabit our bodies in ways that limit us or produce pain and discomfort.

I wasn't sure what to expect of the course; I had registered earlier this year after reacting to the flyer with a physical sensation in my chest and a sense that there was something in the course for me that would break up whatever it is that gets between me and being fully present with people. After completing the course, I cannot say exactly how it worked, but the breakthroughs I had were huge.

There were 34 other participants in the course which was led by Jane Grandbouche, a Wisdom course leader from Florida. Going in, I knew four of the other partici- pants and recognized a few others from the Bay Area. By the end of the week there was a very strong sense of community amongst us all. As I mentioned a couple of days ago in my blog post, what truly defined the week for me were the amazing conversations. We were in the course three and a half hours a day, and the rest of the time was our own. I spent mine almost exclusively with other people in the course, and unlike my standard pattern, I didn't hang primarily with the people I already knew nor with the same people each day. And no matter who I was with, they were the perfect people to be with. In retrospect, what stood out clearly was the fact that I'd had no "throw away" conversations during the week. Whatever we were doing--eating, laying on the beach, aerobicizing in the pool, or touring the rain forest--people brought a depth and intentionality to their dialogues that is so rare in everyday life.

This was my second vacation course, and in the first one I had paid extra to have a room to myself. I had wanted to avoid having to deal with any issues arising from having a straight roommate; interestingly enough, having more freedom and ease around being with straight men was something I wanted to get out of that course. (And I got it! :-) My roommate Shannon was a great guy, immediately eliminating any concern that I might have had.

During the week I began a friendship with John, the travel agent who had arranged the trip. Enjoying the sun together on the beach one day, he triggered a memory I had of a junior high dance and a horrible moment when I noticed that the girl who I was going to ask to dance had cringed when she saw me coming. I realized that years later after I had come out, that event was still often in the background when I went out dancing at 177 Townsend, the club space where I always felt like a king, able to approach anyone and say anything. I felt unstoppable, but there was an unrecognized subtext of completing that humiliation from years before...

WE LEARNED A DECEPTIVELY SIMPLE structural exercise in the course which we practiced in groups of five before moving on to using the technique by ourselves. The exercise consisted of processing our thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations in the moment, and in its simplicity gave us huge access to unexpected insights. One night while doing the exercise with other participants, I found myself experiencing a particular moment from childhood. It is the first memory I have of something being very wrong, and while from my current perspective it seems trivial, it was traumatic to me as a child.

I was the oldest grandchild on my mother's side of the family, and for a number of years Easter had been all about me hunting for the Easter eggs. Then my sister and cousin reached the age where they, too, could participate. Knowing that I already knew what I was doing, my mother, grandmother, and aunt all helped Molly and Julie. It was such a normal thing, but to me that morning it meant that I was no longer wanted. I pouted and cried and took myself away... and taking myself away is what I have always done since then when I face failure.

It seems like such a silly thing to be traumatized by, and my mother has asked me what she might have done differently to have prevented it. "Nothing," I always tell her. And if it hadn't been that event, it would have been something else. We all experience failure for the first time at some young age, and we all decide that it means something. Whether the event is big or small matters little; in the world of a child, the fall from grace is inevitable.

Sitting on the floor doing the structural exercise in Costa Rica last week, someone asked me what I was present to, and for a few seconds I was that little boy again. I have talked about that incident many times, but this was different: I was experiencing the emotion of that moment for the first time in 35 years. And I cried that little boy's tears.

In reflecting on the experience, I saw that that little boy no longer serves me, that I don't need to carry around that pain anymore. I got to complete that experience.

ONE OF OUR ASSIGNMENTS was to watch other people and identify what we liked about how they walked, sat, etc. And then, once we had developed a sense of what we liked, we were encouraged to steal from people. (No, not their cameras!) Jane told us that we weren't stuck with the structural sentences that we already have, and like changing our shoes for different activities, we can put on new structural language as we move through life.

Mario was the fitness trainer at the resort, and I had met him one day in the gym. We'd had a nice chat about what he liked about his job and working with people. A day later I joined him in the pool and tried water aerobics for the first time; he had pushed us hard but always kept it fun. Someone described him as being "completely comfortable in his body."

The second time I did water aerobics, I watched him carefully, and I identified some things to steal: his slightly bow-legged walk, his smile that revealed not only his upper teeth (as mine does) but also the lower ones, and his habit of humorously lifting his eyebrows (my eyebrows are primarily used to warn). After the aerobics session, I asked his age: twenty-five.

It occurred to me that I didn't need to steal any new structural move- ments or postures from a 25-year-old. In Portland earlier this year, a young friend told me that I was a kid at heart, and it really resonated. I really enjoy getting crazy and having a good time, and I have many young friends. I'm often attracted to young men; I love their energy.

What I don't own all the time is that I'm a man. That may sound strange, but so often I still feel like a kid. Even riding in the shuttle from the airport to the resort, I had the feeling of being a boy on an adventure.

Last fall I had flown down to SF from Portland for Folsom Street Fair. On Sunday morning I had been at a club dancing, and while standing in line for the restroom, I had caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror.

When I was in my early and mid-20s, I remembered seeing gay men who were MEN. Strong. Established. Powerful. And that morning I had seen myself as such a man, staring back at me in the mirror. It had surprised me.

In Costa Rica, I got really in touch with being a man, and I chose to steal from the awesome men in the course, like my friend Mark. One day in class he had stood up to his full 6'-plus height, and the powerful presence that he is filled the room. Now that is something worth stealing!

So many men in the course--Mark, my roommate Shannon, Brad, Red, Jeff, Clark, Sam--contributed greatly to me during the week. Many women did as well (and wow, were there some amazing women! Dolly, Marlene, Christina, Ellen, Eve, Roxanne, Monica, Cathy, Sandra, Della, Linda, Barbara, Elissa amongst others). But in this course it was the men that really made a difference for me.

THE LAST NIGHT OF THE COURSE we had a meal at Mar y Sol, a marvelous continental restaurant near the resort. The dinner was filled with exploration and inquiry, and afterwards a few folks and I went skinny dipping in the Pacific. It was my second night of doing so that week, and like the first the surf was filled with tiny bioluminescent creatures that glowed as we splashed about. Five of us sat in the waves and shared our experiences... freely able to just be with each other after having bonded so quickly during the week. It occurred to me later that the real bioluminescent creatures at that resort were us, the folks in Structural Connections.

I crawled into bed around 2am, and while I had to be up just four short hours later, I lay there for an hour thinking about all that had happened during the week. Out of all of the week's experiences--completing the pain of that little boy who didn't get all the Easter eggs, getting to own that I'm a man, really hearing the acknowledgment that people gave me, and enjoying so much ease in being with people--I had a brand new, deeply felt sense of who I am.

What an absolutely awesome feeling. I think it must be what the Costa Ricans mean by "pura vida."

Note: I went to the CarbonNeutral Shop and offset the CO2 emissions from my flight to and from Costa Rica. It cost me $18.

The NORAD tapes from 9/11

I just read Michael Bronner's Vanity Fair special report, "9/11 Live: The NORAD Tapes." The report includes audio clips from previously unreleased NORAD dictaphone tapes which highlight the confusion on September 11. Bronner, an associate producer of the movie United 93, was interviewed yesterday on The Diane Rehm Show and today on Day to Day.

Among other things, the article and the interviews describe some of the inconsistencies in the military's testimony to the 9/11 Commission that led some commission members to believe that they were being deliberately mislead (see the UPDATE in yesterday's post).

Like so much else related to 9/11, listening to the tape excerpts left as much obscured as revealed. After reading the article and listening to the clips, as well as both interviews, tough questions about what happened that day still remain unanswered. How is it that there were only four fighters in the northeast U.S. that were available to intercept that day? Why were two of those four initially sent east over the ocean? Why the inconsistencies in what the government told us in the immediate aftermath of the attacks, not to mention their testimony to the 9/11 Commission? Why did it take so long to finally get approval to shoot down the hijacked planes (according to the tapes, this didn't occur until after the attack was over)?

A few weeks ago I read Dr. David Griffin's book, The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11., which I wrote about here. One of the points raised in the book is that the amount of dust produced by the collapse of the WTC towers can't be explained if they came down simply as a result of gravity. In other words, if the towers fell solely due to their supporting beams being weakened by fire, there wasn't enough kinetic energy to pulverize the concrete in the buildings into the huge clouds of very fine dust that were produced.

I'm no structural engineer (and have never played one on TV :-) but I did find myself in a high-rise building in downtown SF recently. I was at the gym, and the concrete columns and ceiling were exposed. I sat there and tried to imagine the collapse of the building, and the thought that I couldn't escape was this: more happened on 9/11 than we know about. The government knows more than they told us. We already know this to be true, judging from the 9/11 Commission's decision to refer their concerns the inspectors general at the Defense and Transportation Departments.

I wonder if we will ever know what really transpired that day, which goes to the heart of Griffin's book: there are enough unanswered questions about the attacks of 9/11 to warrant a truly independent investigation, and that treating the official story as gospel serves certain parties very well, but not our nation as a whole.

And if you wonder why I keep writing about this, I can say only this: having the unanswered questions answered matters. It matters because the answers may support the official story, and then we can all sleep easy. But if the answers conflict with the official story, then we need to be very, very afraid...

More hot water

On my flight home from Costa Rica, I was treated to the wonderful aroma of a hot cup of ginger peach tea. A beautiful woman across the aisle had brought along a thermos and was enjoying it as she wrote stories on her Mac.

The scent reminded me of my first visit to the Leland Tea House on Bush Street in San Francisco. My friend Jeanne had taken me there; it's one of her special places. I quickly found out why: the room is inviting and comfortable; William, the co-founder, is charming and friendly; and the food is tasty. I had the opportunity to sniff a variety of teas and create my own custom blend. Ginger peach was one of my selections.

I told my fellow traveler about it and remembered promising William to spread the word. If you live here or are visiting the City by the Bay, check it out!

ANOTHER KIND OF HOT WATER--moisture in the atmosphere--may be more common in the future. Like much of the country, San Francisco has been having a warmer summer than usual. The Washington Post reported today that the heat waves we've been having in the U.S. and Europe are likely to occur more frequently due to global warming.

The other thing that has been common lately in America is a record demand for electricity. It occurred to me a week ago that this is something of a vicious cycle: global warming increases the likelihood of heat waves, which in turn drive up energy consumption, and that means power plants produce more CO2, further contributing to global warming. The problem is exacerbated by a growing population as well as people increasingly choosing to live in warmer areas, such as California's inland valleys.

We are all contributing to the problem, which also means we all have an opportunity to be part of the solution. So think about the local and global communities that you're part of when you're deciding where to set that thermostat... :-)

AND TO CONTINUE TO SHARE MY COSTA RICAN EXPERIENCE with you, here is a pic of my awesome new "New York Cute" friend Ellen. We had just donned our harnesses in preparation for a rain forest canopy tour... what a thrill!

I'm back!!!

And in more ways than one. :-)

Yes, I haven't written much for awhile; I've been super busy.

And I also just came back from eight days in gorgeous Costa Rica. I was there for Landmark Education's Structural Connections course...
what an amazing adventure! The vacation alone was worth the cost, as was the course itself. I feel like I got double value for my money. I had many "firsts" on the trip: my first times doing water aerobics and tai chi, first time on horseback, first time doing a zip line canopy tour, etc.

There were 34 other participants in the course, and the most wonderful aspect of the trip was that I didn't have a single "throw away" conversation the whole week. So many great people to talk to, so many great dialogues to have. Loved it! And I'll write more about it soon.

I've also started my career as a life coach by completing the first of five three-day weekends that make up the Coaching Training Institute's life coaching core curriculum. We practiced coaching throughout the weekend, and I had some anxiety before my initial practice sessions. But sometime on the second day I started to look forward to them, and by the final day, I was totally lit up because I had realized that this isn't just a career that I will like... it is one that I will love.

UPDATE

The Washington Post reported yesterday that the 9/11 Commission was skeptical of the Pentagon's story about what happened on the morning of September 11th, so much so that they considered referring their suspicions to the Justice Department. Read on here.