Category Archives for family

Chapel of Hope

On Thursday, May 15, it’s true, Bette Midler’s particularly brassy-voiced version of “Chapel of Love” was ringing through my head as I was running down Market Street trying to get to the California State Building by 10am, in time for the Supreme Court’s decision on In Re Marriage. (As you may remember,) It was a very hot day, and I was panting and sweaty by the time I reached the Supreme Court — not in good shape for my photo opp with Kate Kendell — but I was feeling surprisingly hopeful about the immediately pending decision on marriage.

It struck me that, having hope, I could have been greatly devastated by a negative decision, and yet I decided to act in accordance with hope itself. I was not disappointed that day.

Since then I’ve been completely charmed by the fact of hope itself. So when the NCLR called to offer Leanne and me an interview spot this week on All Things Considered with Melissa Block, we cleared our schedules. We spoke hopefully, soulfully, and as if we were talking with friends — who just happened to span the nation.

I’ve been thinking a lot these days about the Harvey Milk quote my friend Jim Lowder used to quote in his sermons:

The important thing is not that we can live on hope alone, but that life is not worth living without it.

Never have I appreciated that sentiment as much as I have in these days, and it strikes me that the act of living at all is the ultimate act of hope. As for marriage, we think the third time is a charm and yes we think Californians will act fairly and keep our marriage legal, but above all, we have hope, we have each other, and we have our family. These things are the most precious of all, and I’ll make as many vows as it takes to keep them that way.

Volumes of a Man

I had lunch with my father yesterday.  I twittered that I was lunching with the most important man in the world – but he in reality has always made me feel like the most important person in his world, and I bet that everyone in my family, and beyond, feels like that whenever they are talking with him.

He brought me some important records from his long and successful working career in different in ascending levels of government in California. He shared wisdom gleaned from all these years of his important career.

Many things he said struck me and will help me, but one thing made me bolt awake early this morning. Whenever he went into meetings, he said, he took a notebook and he always took a lot of notes. Before he met with me he took the time to go through his huge porter, as he called it, to find the essence of what was important to bring to me. He said there are notebooks and notebooks and notebooks in this huge porter.

This struck me in the light of the early morning for two reasons. One is that every day – or maybe just as time goes on – I find ways I am more alike with my family. A bolt of recognition breeds a common understanding, and that’s a special feeling I’m getting used to with my daughter as well. Just like my dad, it turns out, I take tons of notes (coming as no surprise to anyone who works with me).

The second reason has to do with that elusive process of synthesis. To some, the amazing point might be that he kept all those notebooks at all, but to me, the big gift is that my dad pulled out just the right notebooks that would be valuable to me at this point in my working career. What’s funny about blogging this is that I believe this to be the point of “Web 2.0:” the synthesis. The medium might have changed from notebooks (just as from newspapers, editorials, letters, even emails) to blogging – now continuing on to twittering – but the point is still the same: to synthesize.

When it comes down to it, is the huge porter and the process of going through notebook after notebook really a different process of innovation than popping up a browser tab to Google? The tools might have advanced with us, but what’s important is culling through those years of volumes to get to the right point at the right moment – for the right person.  How lucky I am that Dad has always made me feel like the right person.

The third of two things that struck me (yes, I should have kept sleeping) is that innovation is such a continuing process, just like another common thread through our family. Big companies talk about reacting to this or that latest disruption as if it’s the only one. It’s only today’s — this moment is small. What’s important in the next moment will be different.