Post game thoughts

One of the reasons I don't often read the SF Chronicle is the letters to the editor. (I'll get to that).  I did dive in yesterday, though, to find out about the fate of the various offices and propositions we voted on. Our ballots here are five pages, double sided. Nationally, of course, the country sent a loud "shellacking" message to Obama and the Democrats: Stop it. Locally, California and San Francisco remained true to form and on the road to further ruin. (Although granting the vote, even in limited fashion, to non-citizens, failed to pass. Some sanity remains. And the useless marijuana proposition was also defeated.)

There were a few races where people ran unopposed. Anyone I voted for in that situation won. Handily. But wherever there were competitors, none of my choices won. How countercultural of me. (The State AG race will take a while to complete and I may have one winner there, but not yet.) For State propositions, I was with the majority most of the time. For local ones, half and half.

California has a population of about 33 million, of whom about 24 million are over 18. The governor's race drew about 7 million voters. (The two previous ones drew 8 and 6 million.)

Now back to why I don't read the Chronicle's Letters to the Editor. I am sure that people like the two I will cite can be found anywhere, but they seem to encapsulate aspects of the local population that I detest.

The Giants won the Series, of course, on Tuesday night and the city erupted in several hours of boisterous merrymaking. Writer 1 said he was awakened by all the noise and mayhem but was disappointed to learn that instead of celebrating the war crimes trial of Bush and Cheyney, it was merely about some "man-boys" playing a game.  Writer 2, a young wife and new mother, went with her hubby and infant out into the raucous crowds at the Civic Center and discovered, to her horror, that the smoke of cannabis and tobacco was present. Amazingly, when she chastised some of the revellers, they responded unsympathetically. Her conclusion: that mothers and children are unwelcome in this city and that she felt "unsafe" and is now looking to move out of town.

I will spare you much commentary on these two, since they are pretty much self explanatory. But they do represent a strain of the local peeps that is, shall we say, very unattractive.

What was very attractive, however, was all the joy and mayhem precisely about an American game. I generally loathe diversity talk, but if you looked at the seas of people all smiling and shouting, focussed on a common pleasure and pretty well uninterested in the details of their diversities, it was heartening. I had a similar experience in Las Vegas a couple of years ago: the most racially mixed crowds I think I have ever seen. Getting along just fine. Not because they were trying to, but because they forgot about that and were engaged in the more common human enterprise of gambling, eating, drinking and having a good time.

My experience suggests to me that when we are conscious of our differences and it is on the bases of our differences that we try to relate, it always fails. We do much better when we find a common interest and just go for it.

Looking from the City, NorthWest to the Marin Headlands

One sad note. I shared an uncommon common moment with someone who normally eschews feeling anything other than happy, hungry or horny. Both of us, watching the parade and the City Hall celebration, thought of people who would have loved to see this, had they only lived long enough. I thought of my friend Christina, who died last year of cancer. She was a great Giants fan and this would have pleased her very very much.