Chronicles of a Paper Stack

For the last year or more, my weekend mornings can be summarized as follows: coffee, brewed or bought; pastries, scones, bagels, or cinnamon rolls; quiet music; and the San Francisco Chronicle.

Local newspapers, the print version, are in many ways a relic of a more patient, possibly less environmentally-friendly world, depending on one's perspective on the amount of energy required for the Internet. I'm not sure what the comparative carbon-footprints are. Nevertheless, there is something satisfying about getting all the way through an actual paper. Especially when you have to consider the value you are getting from your subscription.

When I first subscribed, I had a deal as good as drinking fine scotch in a wooded cabin on a rainy night, about $20 for 13 weeks of Wednesday through Sunday service. 13 weeks ago, the price went up to $40. I was fine with that, I could definitely afford it, and I felt good about paying to support a local daily newspaper, even though I could read the paper every day at work, and even though on many weekends, I have not been home and have been buying extra copies.

Yesterday, I got the bill for the next 13 months--which had already been charged to my credit card; you get the bill after the fact--and found the rate is now $80.

This is where I find myself wrestling with a conundrum.

The newspaper is the local daily newspaper. It is also run by a corporation. I'm not naturally inclined to trust corporations to have more than a fiduciary investment in a community, but I want to thwart the trend of newspapers dying across the country.

The corporation, while publicly fretting about having to shut down all together, has forced major concessions on the part of the union employees--union-busting, anyone? On the one hand, I would like to keep those workers employed and the newspaper in existence. On the other hand, should I support a corporation under the current paradigm of commercial journalism?

Of late, the Chronicle has made many, presumably costly, changes. These changes range from the substantive (new comics, a new round-up of headlines from newspapers around the world) to the cosmetic (the sports section being printed on green paper once again on Sundays, and an expensive new printing process to improve the visual quality) to the supposedly-substantive-but-merely-cosmetic (a new solipsistic column by a former mayor who clearly doesn't lack for self-enthusiasm). Are these changes increasing the value I get for my money? Is this the right question I should even be asking when it comes to a source of news? Is that part of the problem in and of itself? A newspaper is a profit-driven endeavor.

When you factor in the extra charge built into subscriptions to cover delivery costs, subscribing costs me more than would buying the papers daily, Wednesday-Sunday, which is a bit irritating when you consider that a subscription gives a paper a guaranteed income, upfront. Still, I can probably afford this. The question is, do I want to? When I have access to the daily paper at work, and could just buy the paper on the weekend for my ritual, is subscribing to the paper at this price worth it?

I'm not sure yet.

Perspective

I hesitated the other day to ask workers to move a truck that was blocking our exit from a parking space, because conflict makes me uncomfortable.

A 17 year old kid helping a relative haul groceries, and who had recently left one school to avoid gang trouble, was shot and killed in Bayview-Hunters Point, another innocent bystander.

I don't like driving in the city, because of all the cars and noise and having to stalk people for their parking spaces. It's loud and metallic and non-tranquil.

After a dinner on Mission Street at Specchio, we couldn't get back to the car right away, because a police car was blocking entry and exit from the side street where we parked and where two people were shot while we ate.

I sometimes get agitated because I can't decide if I really want to commit to writing.

I actually have a good job with some job security at a job I can believe in philosophically. Job! Yay!

The people who crush through the back doors of Muni buses irk me, especially the fare-dodgers, and the loud teenagers with their skateboards and the cloying scent of artless permanent marker. And when I walked past someone on the street today smoking a cigarette, the scent was like swallowing liquid ash.

Looking at the city from the top of Bernal Hill, it is divided into two tidal pools of architecture, north and south, the buildings like water filling the spaces between the hills, frozen in a sunset. The downtown skyline is like a force of nature. A red-tailed hawk settles quietly, unnoticed by others, on the branch of the tree above our heads.

No On 8

Today's the day the State Supreme Court hears arguments for and against Proposition 8, the proposition that denies human beings the right to marry. NPR ran a feature this morning about the protests that arose after Prop 8 passed, specifically the protests that targeted individuals and businesses that donated to the Yes on 8 cause.

Granted, some protests might have gone over the line, and vitriol is rarely helpful. Nevertheless, there is a strange sanctimony or unwillingness to be honest among the Yes on 8 supporters. A creamery owner in Sacramento was 'mystified' at protests at his business after he donated a large amount of money, saying he'd always had good relations with the gay and lesbian community. Frank Schubert, who ran the Yes On 8 campaign, says that the protests are targeting any one who gave money to Yes On 8, regardless of their stance on gay rights, and also that the protests are attacking people's freedom of religion.

First of all, you can't argue that a donation to Yes On 8 is not an attack on gay rights. The content of the proposition allows one group of humans a certain right, while denying that right to another group of humans. Don't hide your support behind arguments for the will of the electorate. That isn't relevant.

And the Anti-Prop 8 campaign is in no way an infringement of anyone's right to believe as they want, nor is it an infringement on their right to vote for or against particular ballot issues with anonymity. You are certainly free to believe that homosexuality is wrong; and you are certainly entitled to abstain from marrying a homosexual if you really don't want to.

But if you are going to give money to fund a campaign of this nature, and then if you are going to be upset when people find out what you did, then you need to have the courage of your convictions, and accept the fact that your actions are causing pain to friends, neighbors, family members. You need to accept that there is no love or compassion in your actions.

If you can accept that what you are doing is going to have consequences, and that there are going to be people who do not care much for you as a human being, then god bless you. Just don't play the innocent in this case. You are on a slippery slope of separate but equal that we have hiked before.

Sports, Disenchanting

Opening Day is just over a month away. Soon we're going to break out the Giants' schedule and pick some Sunday afternoon for a day trip to the waterfront ballpark, Vaughn and Tara, Marina and me, for garlic fries and all the contemplative yet visceral joys to be offered by the duels between pitcher and batter, the smack of the ball hitting bats, arcs of rawhide-covered spheres driven towards alleys of green.

The other afternoon, I tuned the radio to KNBR, listened to a few innings of a Cactus League exhibition against Seattle. Baseball on the radio is storytelling at a deceptively sublime level. Like any other story, it has heroes, concurrent and competing narratives, defined objectives, clear obstacles, scale and the lingering scent of Ken Burnsian mythology.

The 50s image of America the perfect society of apple pie and opportunity and political idealism is pretty much defunct, though the possibility remains of a more pragmatic idealism being resurrected, despite the lingering odor of Rush Limbaugh and his "I hope President Obama fails." Baseball is one aspect of American life where you can, for a time, lose yourself in a story.

Unless, of course, you remember the villains.

The thing that disappointed me the most about Alex Rodriguez's admission of steroid use is not the steroids themselves. I've learned to expect disappointment when it comes to the stars of the game; plus, as people have pointed out, there were no penalties from Major League Baseball for the substances Rodriguez used at the time. Baseball is a business, and money is at stake, so cheating is to be expected.

I'm more disappointed that Rodriguez, on national TV, slandered the SI reporter, Selena Roberts, who broke the story, implicating her in legal problems, saying she had been thrown out of his apartment building, saying she was in trouble with the Miami police. This was not true.

Rodriguez, in the midst of his embarrassment, and already rich beyond any necessity, was impugning Roberts' integrity, thereby threatening her livelihood.

He is not a good man. He is not a good role model. He talked about being young and stupid when he took steroids; not much seems to have changed for him, especially in light of the fact that he left the first day of spring training in the company of the cousin who was implicated in providing him steroids in the first place. Rodriguez is either dumb or brash or both, or unfortunately perceptive enough to realize that this scandal will not to stick to him in any real punitive way. The Yankees aren't going to write off such a marketable investment.

There has been no public apology from Rodriguez to Roberts, just an off-the-record cell phone call. What, you thought Scott Boras would allow his moneymaker admit publicly to being a spoiled, spiteful jerk, when with time, the public is more likely to celebrate the baseball star than defend the journalist?

One can only hope that karma is real.

II. In further sports cynicism, consider the case of David Beckham. The LA Galaxy gave him a Hollywood studio's worth of money to come over here to play in the US, party with Tom Cruise, sell a bunch of jerseys, and, oh yes, maybe provide some quality and leadership on the soccer pitch.

After two seasons in the MLS, the Galaxy have not made the playoffs, Beckham has not shown any inclination in leadership, and during a loan spell with Milan, has expressed the desire to not return to the States, hoping that the Galaxy would accept the pitifully small offer Milan made to make his services theirs on a permanent basis.

Because, he's Beckham, they're Milan, and we're just the Americans. What does a contract with us matter?

The disclaimers: of course people are entitled to change their minds, to want different experiences, and there is a world of difference in quality between the LA Galaxy and AC Milan. There is a vast disparity in scope and challenge. And honestly, if a player doesn't want to be there, the accepted wisdom is it is better for all parties for him not to be there.

But I'll admit that a part of me, the fan of soccer, was excited and starstruck when Beckham signed, and a part of me now feels a little bit spurned. I feel if Beckham can't abide by his ludicrously awesome contract, he shouldn't have signed it in the first place. I feel he should have spent less time partying with Tom Cruise and Will Smith and less time marketing his image, and more time promoting soccer by taking a leadership role with the Galaxy.

And a part of me hopes that Beckham and England play the US in the World Cup next year. I love England, rooted hard for them in a Welsh pub with my British friends when they competed in the 2002 World Cup, and hold Michael Owen and Alan Shearer to be two of my favorite individual players. But the time will come for the young US team to assert itself and beat England on the grand stage--it's happened once before way back when--and I would enjoy for that to happen with Beckham on the field.