Notes from a Floating Dog

It’s Friday, the day after tax day. Not that that is a big deal but it seems de-rigueur to say so….

I seem to be having more of these experiences where I do what I used to do; namely go out and randomly check out cultural events. And then realize, wow, there’s cool shit going on here in the bay area.

Tonight was no exception, I went to LaPena cultural center in Berkeley and caught a comic performing. His material was pretty good and poked my sensibilities in the side a bit. That was great. After the show I did the hang at the bar for a while and just watched people. Damn, there are some fun AND interesting folks out there. I seem to forget about this part of life during the work week. Aren’t we working to live, and NOT living to work.. Hmmm, I’ll have to do more of this…

And OBTW, I miss my mom…

So, about 2 weeks ago, dutiful parent (along with my wife) that I am, took our 5 year old daughter and a girlfriend to the Lawrence Hall of Science in the Berkeley hills. Now it is important to me, being the father of a girl, that she get exposed to as much science and math as possible. Not so that she’ll necessarily become some manner of techie, but so that she is facile with understanding how things work from politics, to johnson counters….

Well as I am walking through the hall with her, it occurs to me that there are a fair number of other parents there with the same idea.What worries me however is that if all of these youngsters become techies, developing all kinds of neat protocols, and devices to push media around. Who will be left to generate the actually generate the content that these devices will push/carry across the “ether”

In most parts of the “industrialized world” it seems, at least from a metric that most societies understand, that the arts are not really valued. At least not nearly as valued as say, the Nth generation iPhone (full disclosure, I have one and we are exclusively a mac family). 

So here’s my plan (though my daughter I am sure will have other ideas). I want her to be able to bust out the solution for a non-linear fourth order differential equation….. when she needs to because…. it helps her figure out how to internalize the fact that Dave Holland’s Big band swings with a groove like nobodies bidness…. She does all this and then pays good money she earns as some creative type to see Dave Holland’s big band live…..

Now that’s a fathers dream

Peace y’all