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When today’s boomers, not to mention today’s pre-boomers (the new-chic word for geezer) were young, stress had not been invented. Oh, moms got frazzled with everything, dads (and occasionally moms too) came home bushed after a long hard day at the office, office buddies groused about too much work for too little pay – but nobody had figured out that Stress was messing with our lives.

Now we know.

Over on the PositScience site – this is a company that follows such things – Karen Merzenich reports on a Wired magazine article by Jonah Lehrer; it’s not online yet, but parts have been on Lehrer’s own blog. Lehrer has found, in talking with primatologist Robert Sapolsky, that stress is bad for one’s health even if one happens to be a baboon

Throughout decades of research studying baboon populations in Africa, Saposkly noticed that low social position created stress and poorer health in some of the baboons. Studies in humans have shown much the same thing. Specifically, things like having a mean boss or not having any control over your work contribute to a sustained stress response in your brain which negatively affects health and longevity. To paraphrase, Lehrer essentially says that stress doesn’t make you sick- but if you are sick, it will make it worse.

This news comes not long after an article in Psychology Today, by Howard Fillit M.D., about stress and its long-terms effects:

Over the course of a lifetime, the effects of chronic stress can accumulate and become a risk factor for cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s disease. Several studies have shown that stress, and particularly one’s individual way of reacting to stress (the propensity to become “dis-stressed” often found in neurotic people for example), increases the risk for Alzheimer’s disease.

For boomers, pre-boomers, elders and geezers, if stress has been accumulating all these years, it’s probably a good time to change. Perhaps, just chill out. Chilling out is something else that wasn’t invented until after stress was… but it is a handy response for these days.

Happy August from Boomers and Beyond.

Image by Lincolnian (Brian) via Flickr

Retirement village? Assisted living? Co-housing? Age-restricted or aging-in-place communities? Inter-generational cooperative? This space has explored many of the growing varieties of housing choices for boomers and elders when the time comes to downsize, rightsize, clear out or economize. Here’s a new one that’s making the news: think global.

Even with (and sometimes because of) today’s grim economy, increasing numbers of Americans are choosing senior housing overseas. Some are returning to former homes in countries with lower costs or better health care, some are finding bargain housing in inexpensive areas where they have friends or a support community.

But many are just making housing in another country life’s last great adventure.

According to Boomers Abroad, an ambitious online community/social network, the number of Americans and Canadians living abroad, already about 7 million, is expected to double and then some within the next 10 years — and you’re invited to join them. The site links to the top five locales listed in the just-released September/October issue of  AARP The Magazine the best of what Mexico, France, Panama, Portugal and Italy have to offer—”castles, palm trees, rain forests, grilled lobster—in their unique and unparalleled retirement experiences. ”

A new study by researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), Cambridge University and the Karolinska Institute in Sweden has found that even light or moderate intensity physical activity, such as walking or cycling, can substantially reduced the risk of early death.

The study, published in the International Journal of Epidemiology, combined the results from the largest studies around the world on the health impact of light and moderate intensity physical activity. It showed that the largest health benefits from light or moderate activity (such as walking and cycling) were in people who do hardly any physical activity at all. Although more activity is better — the benefits of even a small amount of physical activity are very large in the least physically active.

The good news from this study is that you don’t have to be an exercise freak to benefit from physical activity. Just achieving the recommended levels of physical activity (equivalent to 30 minutes daily of moderate intensity activity on 5 days a week) reduces the risk of death by 19% [95%confidence interval 15% to 24%], while 7 hours per week of moderate activity (compared with no activity) reduces the risk of death by 24% (95% CI 19% to 29%).

(Of course, if you get off the raft and jog around the lake, the benefits rise. Who knows, there could be a further reduction in the risk of death, as long as you aren’t jogging in traffic. Over on his Coloradoan blog, senior runner Jon Sinclair points out that runners of a certain age — Sinclair introduced this writer to the “pre-boomer” designation — have been at it long enough to have proved this point: “Everyone stand up. All of you that began running after 1976 can sit down. Those that still are standing can smirk proudly at those sitting. I’m sure there aren’t many of you standing. For us ‘pre-boomers,’ or pbers, the current state of running is amazing and we should all feel happy about it.”)

But the best news of all, especially for those drawn to summertime laziness, is just in from the SportsGeezer. It is the suggestion that if you invite a bunch of friends to join you on the raft, possibly planning for cocktails and dinner later, you might do just as well skipping the walk/jog altogether:

More powerful than exercise, better than giving up smoking, extensive social networks have been shown to increase longevity by 50 percent. The Scientific American reports on research conducted at Brigham Young University that reviewed the results from 148 studies—which included a total of 308,849 participants—going back to the early 20th century. Most studies assessed survival in contrast to mortality from all causes. Sciam reports that the analysis also assessed what kind of studies best predict a person’s survival. Questionnaires that had asked participants at least a few in-depth questions about various social connections (such as, “To what extent are you participating or involved in your social network?” or “To what extent can you count on other people?”) were more effective at pinpointing a person’s overall risk of mortality from all causes than those that simply determined if a person was single or married or lived with at least one other person. The researchers found that when the questions delved deeper, complex social networks increased survival rates by 91 percent.

Prospects for a pleasant summer and a long life just went up.

Frieden, who also serves as Administrator of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, is in a position to understand all this. A physician with training in internal medicine, infectious diseases, public health and epidemiology, he has spent the past several decades combating disease and advocating for preventive measures across the U.S. and around the world. He took over as head of CDC in June, 2009.

Speaking to an audience of health professionals and community members at San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club recently, Frieden launched his remarks with a story of treating one patient, a few years ago, who had multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (TB is on the rise these days.) Cost of treatment? Over $100,000. Cost of prevention, had this one man been vaccinated? $10.

High on the list of largely preventable diseases, Frieden said, is cardiovascular disease. Simple measures like quitting smoking, cutting down on (or eliminating) trans fats and losing weight would lead to huge reductions in expenditures on treatment of cardiovascular disease, not to mention longer, healthier lives. He also cited the $200 billion cost of tobacco-related disease, which currently claims some 1200 lives per day.

Other preventable health care costs come from teen pregnancy and motor vehicle accidents, Frieden said, citing the dollars that are saved when these don’t happen. But he came down hardest on obesity. “It is epidemic in the U.S.,” he said. “And in the next 30 years obesity is expected to double in adults and triple among children.”

One audience question (OK, it was submitted by this writer/agitator) went unanswered in the Q&A session following the talk: How can the exorbitant costs invested in often-futile end-of-life treatment be reduced? But that question may have been buried in the substantial pile of other questions posed in relation to the above, and other issues such as:

Can CDC spread some money around to states and local governments for health care? “In a word, no.” And what about the catastrophic Deepwater Horizon oil spill? Its effects will be with us for a long time, Frieden said, but CDC’s primary concern right now is with health and safety of workers and others on the scene. CDC is involved with a number of other agencies addressing the human and environmental impacts of the disaster.

The event was introduced by California HealthCare Foundation Director of the Chronic Disease Care Program Sophia Chang, and moderated by University of California San Francisco Chancellor Emeritus and Global Health Institute Director Haile Debas.

On the good news side — which was a slim side of the room, no pun intended — Frieden cited progress in efforts to promote biking and walking as an alternative to the automobile (currently costing $4 million in emergency room visits and $200 billion overall annual costs; “$12 billion could be saved by seat belts”) and in HIV prevention (treatment for one person: $400,000; cost of a condom, five cents.)

This reporter stood briefly at the back of the near-capacity crowd before the talk started and counted 24 audience members who would qualify as obese. It’s easy to feel righteous when you’ve never had a major weight problem and you got to the event on foot and on Muni bus. It’s hard to feel unsympathetic when you can’t seem to lose those 3 or 4 pounds you could really do without, when you smell the french fries while passing every fast food joint on Market Street and you know how many people don’t have access to good public transportation.

Public health is, indeed a public problem. Dr. Frieden has his work cut out for him.

Though marijuana legalization is largely a liberal and progressive cause célèbre, it may be fair to say that the state’s elected Democrats aren’t exactly cuckoo for these coco-puffs.

Prominent California Democrat Sen. Dianne Feinstein has declared her opposition to Prop. 19, signing a ballot argument against legalization put forward by Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD). Sen. Barbara Boxer and Democrat gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown were quick to adopt Feinstein’s position, and the state’s Democratic party, while apparently torn on the issue, officially elected to stay neutral fearing their support could damage state-wide candidates.

In spite of Democratic opposition, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), a drug policy reform group made up of former cops, judges and federal agents, seems to stand perhaps the best chance of swaying the state’s drug policy establishment. They’ve put forward a ballot argument in favor of Prop. 19, and three of their most prominent members from California law enforcement have signed it.

In an exclusive interview, the former police chief of San Jose and the former deputy police chief of Los Angeles County — both members of LEAP — took to task those favoring continued prohibition, insisting that both Sen. Feinstein and MADD level an “emotional, unreasoned” argument for keeping pot illegal.

Sen. Feinstein’s press office was contacted multiple times in seeking a response to these officers. Both times a returned call or e-mail was promised, but none were received after several days.

“I know Dianne Feinestein quite well from when she was mayor of San Francisco,” said former San Jose Chief of Police Joseph McNamara. “I’m kind of stunned by her stance on this. It’s contrary to everything she talked about as a politician in San Francisco.”

By contrast, post-Feinestein San Francisco was host this year to the first-ever International Cannabis and Hemp Expo, and the Hemp Industry Association is planning to hold its 17th annual meeting there in November. Last month also saw San Francisco hosting the first ever Medical Cannabis Cup: a competition among growers, to see who produces the best pot.

It’s pretty clear that the city, by and large, has taken a position of favoring Prop. 19.

“[Feinestein's] position [as San Francisco's mayor] certainly wasn’t this law and order nonsense on stamping out marijuana,” McNamara said.

In a ballot argument against legalization (PDF link), Feinstein and MADD argue that Prop. 19 could cost California school districts $9.4 billion in federal funding, as they would no longer be able to meet federal drug-free standards. They also fret that colleges and universities in California will lose out on federal grants, which is a very real threat that LEAP did not address.

The main thrust of their argument is that due to the ballot initiative’s wording, officers or other public officials would not be able to take preemptive action against stoned drivers: they’d have to wait for accidents to happen. Much of the argument focuses on school bus drivers, and how they could be permitted to ingest marijuana and transport children, leaving the hands of authority bound until someone got hurt.

“Their argument is specious and I don’t think it’s based on any emperical evidence,” contended Steven Downing, the former Los Angeles County deputy police chief. “It’s kinda like, we make things up in order to pass laws. Well, come up with the facts.”

He and McNamara insist there is no evidence to support the assumption that officers or public officials could not enforce laws against driving while intoxicated. They argue that Prop. 19 has nothing to do with laws requiring sobriety while driving, and that it’s impossible to say, as MADD does, that legalization would turn California’s highways into a nightmare.

Similarly, though a recent study by the Rand Corporation predicted that usage is likely to go up because prices could plummet if cannabis is legalized, they too admit that estimating the number of stoned drivers is impossible.

“I think one of the strongest points to make is that there were no studies when these drugs were outlawed,” Downing said. “It was religious fervor and prejudice. Fear. We all know that’s how it all got started. That’s how alcohol prohibition got stated. It’s the same today for marijuana, which is kept illegal by emotional, unreasoned arguments.”

“Smoking may even decrease,” McNamara said. “Looking at the reaserch, 85% of high school students surveyed say it’s more difficult to get beer than marijuana. The reason for that is that beer is regulated. You need proof of identity and age to purchase it. That argument, that use will explode, is wrong. It may be exactly the opposite. It will be more difficult for people under-age to get cannabis.”

He adds that “marijuana is already in the mix,” as far as the sobriety of drivers is concerned. The former police chief, now a fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, calls Feinstein and MADD’s argument on stoned drivers “speculation that doesn’t make any sense.”

Supporting McNamara’s position is the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, which reported in May that after a double-blind study of 85 drivers tested before and after smoking marijuana, “no differences [in motor control and response time] were found”.

“The laws today prohibit driving under the influence of drugs,” he said. “If they do that, they’re violating the law and can be punished under the present laws. By freeing law enforcement from making so many [marijuana] arrests, this would give them more resources to use against dangerous activities like driving under the influence.”

Downing’s argument was similar, and one of surprise at the lack of support from MADD. He said that fewer marijuana prisoners would mean more drunk drivers serving out their full sentence, thanks to reduced overcrowding in California’s jails.

“When you look at all of it, I think Prop. 19 offers an opportunity for rationality in an area that’s been so emotional,” McNamara said.

Prop. 19 will appear on California’s state-wide ballot this November. Should it pass, individual counties and municipalities would be able to opt in or out of the legalized system; those which opt in would be given additional tax and enforcement options, and residents would be allowed to transport up to one ounce and grow plants in a five-foot-by-five-foot area.

Even if the voters carry Prop. 19, it may not mean anything as it still conflicts with federal law. The Obama administration’s policy has been to not interfere with state-supported medical marijuana initiatives, but the president has said he is opposed to legalization. Whether or not the administration will take a hands-off approach to legalization in California is still an unanswered question.

A recent CBS poll found that while 42 percent of the state’s voters oppose legalization, 56 percent are in favor. Aligned with the majority is the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which endorsed legalization because of prohibition’s inordinate impact on minority communities. The California Young Democrats also endorsed Prop. 19, along with former United States Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders. The 200,000-member-strong United Food and Commercial Workers union, of the Western States Council, backs it as well.

LEAP’s full ballot argument in favor of Prop. 19 is available on their blog.

As it turns out, diagnosing the earliest stage of breast cancer can be surprisingly difficult, prone to both outright error and case-by-case disagreement over whether a cluster of cells is benign or malignant, according to an examination of breast cancer cases by The New York Times.

Advances in mammography and other imaging technology over the past 30 years have meant that pathologists must render opinions on ever smaller breast lesions, some the size of a few grains of salt. Discerning the difference between some benign lesions and early stage breast cancer is a particularly challenging area of pathology, according to medical records and interviews with doctors and patients.

Diagnosing D.C.I.S. “is a 30-year history of confusion, differences of opinion and under- and overtreatment,” said Dr. Shahla Masood, the head of pathology at the University of Florida College of Medicine in Jacksonville. “There are studies that show that diagnosing these borderline breast lesions occasionally comes down to the flip of a coin.”

Much of the current finger-pointing is toward pathologists, where their money comes from, whether they are ‘certified’ or not and in general, how good a job they do.

In 2006, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, an influential breast cancer survivors’ organization, released a startling study. It estimated that in 90,000 cases, women who receive a diagnosis of D.C.I.S. or invasive breast cancer either did not have the disease or their pathologist made another error that resulted in incorrect treatment.

After the Komen report, the College of American Pathologists announced several steps to improve breast cancer diagnosis, including the certification program for pathologists.

For the medical community, the Komen findings were not surprising, since the risk of misdiagnosis had been widely written about in medical literature. One study in 2002, by doctors at Northwestern University Medical Center, reviewed the pathology in 340 breast cancer cases and found that 7.8 percent of them had errors serious enough to change plans for surgery.

This space has argued occasionally for reconsideration of yearly mammograms and for longer, stronger consideration of other options before a mastectomy is performed. Especially in the case of older women.

Would I insist on further studies or opt for less radical treatment if I were diagnosed with breast cancer today? Probably. Can I undo the mastectomy I had at 72? Not exactly. Second-guessing is beside the point for someone who is healthy and fit, but asking questions won’t ever hurt.

Earliest Steps to Find Breast Cancer Are Prone to Error – NYTimes.com.

Meet the 'California Gays'.

As far as I can tell, Katy Perry’s ‘California Gurls’ is the jam of the summer.

I want to be clear that I’m not saying it captures the cultural zeitgeist of 2010 or anything — it’s just the song that America has collectively decided to bore into our collective skulls for the moment. And why not? It has Snoop Dog and manages to steal from both the Beach Boys and Big Star in one sugary swoop. The fact that the video features a naked Perry surrounded by orgasming streams of cotton candy might have something to do with its popularity as well.

The real sign that the song’s a huge hit is the number of parody videos that have sprung up. There’s one for Wisconsin, one for Jersey, Milwaukee gets in on the act and there’s even a parody for California. The most popular parody, (at least based on the number of times it keeps showing up in my Facebook feed) however is Ryan James’ “California Gays.”

Instead of doing something useful with my day, I chatted up GOOD’s information architect, John Durkin about the video, what it says about the gays and what this video means for the future of humanity:

John Durkin: Have you seen Ryan James’s videos? The “California Gays” video for Katy Perry’s song?

True/ Slant: I keep ignoring it on Facebook. Should I not?

JD: It’s the best. The Katy Perry video with Snoop Dog is terrible and makes no sense, but this video made me love the song.

TS: I just started watching it. I am only interested in the blond one so far.

JD: [Perry] loved it and retweeted it. The blond is totally adorable, and then there’s one boy toward the end who shows up who is super cute. But it’s the funny part in the middle that sold me.

TS: I almost lived with one of these guys! I interviewed to be his roommate. This actually is exactly the kind of gay shit I don’t like. Like, these are not my people. Fine for them, don’t get me wrong, but mostly they seem ridiculous. If I were at a party and these were the guests, I would probably feel horribly insecure and judgmental.

JD: Well – it’s just a video! I mean – of course it is! It’s a song about how hot California girls are. It would be silly to show pale hairy people primarily. Notably, there is a fat hairy guy front and center at the end.

L.A. boys spell it out for you.

TS: Guy Branum! He’s great. You know he’s on Chelsea Lately? He’s her official homosexual or something. I like that he’s the celebrity cameo.

JD: And there is some diversity. They’re not all white.

TS: I like how the cute blond is totally sunburned at the end. But that doesn’t count as ‘not white.’ I see only two non-white people.

JD: I thought it was sufficiently self-conscious and willing to be pretty silly — I mean — It’s all put together in a week by a 23 year old logger at MTV.

TS: My problem is not with this vis-a-vis it being a statement about ‘the gehs.’ My problem is that I don’t really want to hook up with any of them.

JD: Ugh. So what? It’s colorful and fun and far more appropriate a video for the song than Katy’s candyland bingo thing.

TS: I am not saying it’s bad. I’m saying it repulses me on a sexual and aesthetic level. Oh, I see now — at the end — That it is like a video blogger’s cute project–

JD: — I think “repulsed” is a bit strong–

TS: — and that sort of makes it more charming.

JD: Yes, it’s more charming when you see the ubergay guy who directed it explain this and a few other pop-videos he made with some of the same people.

TS: But yeah, the whole ‘Ohmgawd am I not fucking fabulous with my speedo and my sunglasses’ thing is usually pretty repulsive, at least for me. I am sort of happy now that I realize that I don’t like those guys and that being gay just means being attracted to other guys and not having to buy into well, the rainbow youth.

JD: I suppose – but – hello – this song is about California and therefore, the beach.

Scene from the original video.

TS: It’s just a taste thing! My California gays would be like, latinos on the eastside or silver lake dudes.

JD: Well, maybe you should do a music video with them and have the dance-off part in the middle be eastside vs. westside.

TS: I already did my gay music video! 50s sexual sublimation and science experiments! I mean, this is really cute, but you have to see it’s also very very WeHo meets Queer As Folk. And maybe only as a result of being gay for pay all these years, it’s not my thing. Put this way: Judging the video on its own merits, it’s great! It totally achieves what it sets out to do.

JD: It’s certainly over-the-top gay. It couldn’t be gayer, but that was the intention from the outset. It’s not necessarily meant to be smorgasbord of sexual delights for you. It’s just supposed to be campy and fun.

TS: I agree and then want to have a conversation about what ‘gay’ means and if the ‘gay’ presented in the video is in fact a contemporary and relevant depiction of ‘gay’, whether here in California or elsewhere. I can’t help but watch gay stuff without deconstructing it. It’s why I avoid it.

JD: It does interest me that a 23-year-old’s vision of California gays is this. It’s a very 90s gay.

TS: Totes.

JD: A very gay pride look

TS: Not even hipster gay. It’s almost Chelsea.

JD: Which – again – for the summer – for the pop song it’s a video to – that’s perfect. Yes, its Chelsea WeHo West Village gays. In fact, the NY gays in the danceoff were slightly hipsterish in comparison.

TS: Which is a sort of strange statement, don’t you think? I always found the whole Chelsea boy mentality to be very fascist. Very ‘one of us’. You’d think in doing a video about ‘California Gays’, we would see some more pride in the different kinds of gays here, or barring that, something less dated.

JD: Not to a Katy Perry song tho. I mean, what hipster listens to Katy Perry?

TS: I know I don’t.

JD: Right, I don’t either – until my head was infected with her song due to this video.

TS: It is catchy, but so is AIDS.

JD: I thought the song was stupid. Still do – but they really made it fun! That’s the thing I feel it’s not. It seems to be 90s gays style, but I don’t detect any weirdness about AIDS. There is no dark side to the video.

TS: No, there is no dark side to this video. Yeah, but it’s not my fun. It’s like the Roland Emmerich pool party fun.

JD: And that’s because it’s through a 23-year-old lens.I think they don’t see AIDS. They just see rainbow Speedos.

Jeeps are pretty Californian, right?

TS: Fun gay speedo Nazis romping on the beach!

JD: Well, I certainly don’t see them as Nazis! And it’s funny that there is a homophobic line delivered by Snoop Dogg in the song, delivered by the director confusingly in this video. “No weenies.”

TS: Oh, I saw that. They could have made that a moment. But it just sort of flops out.

JD: Ahem. Yeah, I think their enthusiasm primarily, and then the skillful choreography, editing, etc… are commendable. They made a much more fun video for that song – that at least makes sense – and I dunno -I like the sort of thoughtless happy gayness they show.

TS: It’s well made.

JD: I am tired of seriousness and complexity and extended metaphors and meta this and that.

TS: Well, it’s July. No one can blame you.

JD: Yes. That’s why I felt it was timely.

TS: Also, the world is falling apart, so maybe there are more important things than pouring over the hidden meanings of a gay music video parody?

JD: No, no there are not.

Norma Lopez went missing on her way home from summer school. Photo via KTLA News.

When 7-year-old Kyron Horman went missing from his Portland, Ore. school early last month, news outlets ranging from blogs to newspapers to TV stations raced to cover the story. His name quickly climbed up most-searched term lists and People magazine has been relentless in its documentation of each break in the case. Meanwhile, the case of another young boy who went missing at nearly the exact same time as Horman, Anthony Thomas, generated only a fraction of the coverage.

It was only a yet another example of the media’s crush to report on abductions and foul play involving white women and children, while giving little coverage to minorities who disappear: The latest example is 17-year-old Norma Lopez, who appears to have been kidnapped on her way home from summer school in Moreno Valley, Calif. Most of the coverage of Lopez’s disappearance has come from local news outlets, while the national attention to the case by places like the Los Angeles Times and CNN has been restricted to short blog posts — rising nowhere near the level that dominated the disappearances of girls like Elizabeth Smart and Natalee Holloway.

Media coverage is crucial to the cases of people who go missing because it is often vigilant members of the public who can play a role in helping law enforcement find the victim. Certainly a young, beautiful girl like Lopez and the eery circumstances surrounding her going missing — some of her belongings and “evidence of a struggle” were found in a field Lopez would walk through as a shortcut — are just as deserving of coverage as any other person — white, female or otherwise.

Photo by Xhanatos on Flickr

Read the headlines on San Francisco’s Housing Authority, and you may feel like you’ve stumbled upon a history book about Chicago’s public housing.

Gross mismanagement. Rents not collected. Multi-million dollar deficit. Poor upkeep. Serious lawsuits because of negligence. A real mess.

Now, San Francisco is looking to remedy two of those problems - the deficit and the rent collection in one fell swoop. They’ve issued thousands of eviction notices for families living there, letting them know they’ve got to pay up or get out.

The problem is, many residents can’t trust what they’re told they owe. Record keeping has been so bad that many who have paid every month have also gotten eviction notices, or people are being asked to pay much larger sums than they think they owe.

Take Anna Stephens, whose story was told in the San Francisco Chronicle. A single mom with two kids who works as an administrative assistant, she’s paid her rent on time for years. But she got a bill in the mail saying she owes the housing authority $9,750 in back rent. It’s not the first time either. A few years ago, they brought another suit against her after she complained about the security in her building, saying she owed nearly $2,000 in back rent. The suit was later dropped.

Other tenants who are facing hard times say their rent hasn’t been adjusted to their much lower income levels. Others still say paying your rent has never been a big deal in San Francisco’s public housing, so it’s going to be hard to change that idea in tenants minds.

San Francisco is struggling to improve under demands from HUD, not unlike Chicago in the mid-1990s. After years of mismanagement, huge deficits and a large stock of derelict housing, HUD took over CHA in 1996 in an effort to get it back on the right path. Soon after, the Plan for Transformation was gotten underway, knocking down most of the city’s public housing units to make way for mixed-income communities and relocating thousands of families.

In San Francisco, the Housing Authority says it’s not going to throw people out on their ear.

“We realize these are tough economic times,” said Henry Alvarez, the director of SFHA, to the Chronicle. “There is no reason to throw people out on the streets.”

But that’s a difficult message to get through when you send an eviction notice.

Image via Wikipedia

A glimmer of good news from the endless bad-news war in Afghanistan: the people doing the fighting are in touch with someone who was winning, a long time before they started fighting.

In the frantic last hours of Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal’s command in Afghanistan, when the world wondered what was racing through the general’s mind, he reached out to an unlikely corner of his life: the author of the book “Three Cups of Tea,” Greg Mortenson.

“Will move through this and if I’m not involved in the years ahead, will take tremendous comfort in knowing people like you are helping Afghans build a future,” General McChrystal wrote to Mr. Mortenson in an e-mail message, as he traveled from Kabul to Washington. The note landed in Mr. Mortenson’s inbox shortly after 1 a.m. Eastern time on June 23. Nine hours later, the general walked into the Oval Office to be fired by President Obama.

Mortenson, of course, hasn’t been winning any battles. What he has been winning are the trust, and occasionally the hearts, of Pakistani tribal leaders in a long-running effort to educate their daughters.

The story of this school-building crusade, which came about as a thank-you gesture after Mortenson received help during a mountaineering mishap, is told in Three Cups of Tea. The story of the book — it went nowhere when published with a warrior subtitle, then caught on like wildfire when Mortenson won a mini-battle to bring it out as his originally intended plea for peace — is told in the talks he has been making around the country for several years.

To hear Mortenson talk, as this writer has happily done several times, is to become a believer in hope. Most of us have been coming home saying, “Gee, could we spend a few billions less on platoons and give a few billions to Greg Mortenson’s schools instead?” Mortenson, a giant of a man who clearly has no personal agenda, is not a motivational speaker. But his tale is compelling.

The title of that first book comes from his discovery, early on, that the first step in building anything — school, relationship, whatever — is to sit down over three cups of tea. Hundreds of cups of tea and a few near-death episodes later, he has quietly managed to forge relationships with isolated tribes and build schools for girls who will grow up — perhaps — to think there’s something good about America. Some schools have been destroyed (and occasionally rebuilt), some relationships have gone sour, but the idea that something good can be developed between the U.S. and that wild land without bombs and guns — or despite guns and bombs — is heart-warming. And more than a little surprising.

Mr. Mortenson, 52, thinks there is no military solution in Afghanistan — he says the education of girls is the real long-term fix — so he has been startled by the Defense Department’s embrace.

“I never, ever expected it,” Mr. Mortenson, a former Army medic, said in a telephone interview last week from Florida, where he had paused between military briefings, book talks for a sequel, “Stones into Schools,” and fund-raising appearances for his institute. (The Central Asia Institute, a nonprofit foundation dedicated to community-based education, primarily for girls, in Pakistan and Afghanistan.)

But thanks to a few military wives, who read Three Cups of Tea and then insisted their husbands read it too, a connection was made between the warriors and the peacemaker. It is an unlikely, and in many ways perilous, partnership, but if you’ve read the book or heard the talk you probably feel a glimmer of optimism.

The military’s Mortenson-method efforts  in Afghanistan thus far are outlined in Elisabeth Bumiller’s July 18 New York Times report. His own job will now involve convincing the elders that he hasn’t become a tool of the military. It’s a strange world out there. But it seems somehow more hopeful.

Unlikely Tutor Giving Military Afghan Advice – NYTimes.com.

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A few weeks ago I took a trip with my girlfriend to lovely, lovely Julian, California — a lovely little mountain town where there are lovely, lovely wine tastings and just the most lovely apple pies you’ve ever eaten. The town has a lovely gold-rush era feel with a small, but dense main street and plenty of lovely open space. Just outside of town there are lovely fields of lovely tall grass filled with lovely, lovely ticks that latch on to my genitals.

It was a lovely time.

Actually it was. Julian is a beautiful, reasonably priced alternative to Napa, charming romantic and all that. But a tick to the balls has a way of putting a damper on a perfectly good trip – especially when you don’t have health insurance.

I’m from Boston, where Lyme disease is a real problem. Friends and acquaintances that have come down with the disease suffered months upon months of misery, and in some cases permanent neurological damage.

Coming from Boston, I also happen to know that tiny deer ticks are the ones that carry the greatest risk of spreading the disease, and that the longer the tick stays attached, feeding, the grater the chance of infection. My tick was definitely tiny, with the exception of his blood-engorged body. He’d been feeding on me for two days before I caught him.

Not good.

They say the obvious sign of Lyme disease is a telltale bull’s-eye-like rash that appears on the site of the bite after the tick is removed. Now, trying to remove a tick that has its head buried fairly deeply inside your genitals is neither an easy nor pleasant task. By the time I got the sucker off, lets just say there was some carnage. Impossible to tell whether what I was looking at was a bulls-eye, a scab or Godknowswhat. It’s not a particularly pleasing aesthetic canvas down there.

It seemed like I didn’t have a bulls-eye, but I couldn’t be sure. And on top of that I was getting headaches and a wickedly stiff neck – two of the 5 billion signs of Lyme disease.

So much for self-diagnosis.

The disease is treatable if caught early. But, to catch it and treat it I would need a doctor. But how does one do that without health insurance these days? Well, there are three things a person could do in my predicament: go to the emergency room to get an immediate test for Lyme disease, but that struck me as a bit excessive and potentially costly; I could schedule an appointment with a private doctor and pay out of pocket; or I could go to a free clinic and get checked out. If it looked bad, maybe my lab results would even be covered. I went with option number three. Trust me, if you make what I do you’d take door number three as well.

In my relatively large LA County city there is only one free clinic, run by a local church. It meets once a week in the church’s upstairs offices. It’s open for about three hours after working hours. I got there five minutes early and was the fortieth person in line.

The bureaucratic task of processing us was left to a handful of geriatric volunteers. They were slow as could be, but let me tell you, those of you out there who don’t respect your elders better recognize these people are the only ones willing to volunteer to help you out. When they go, so goes a whole lot of earnest people willing to help others for free. The generations that came after them don’t seem to have it in them.

That said, the nurses that volunteered their services were all young, and man were they caring and earnest…and hot. Seriously, guys, girls, it was ridiculous. If you were trying to cast a wildly vapid reality TV show about sexy nurses living and working and Los Angeles, you could just set up shop in the free clinic. No need to look anywhere else.

I waited for about an hour before I was brought from a waiting room to the treatment room and was processed by one of the kindly geriatrics. 15 minutes later one the nurses came to interview me about my situation. She was very polite and smiley as I described the situation with my tick-mauled genitalia. She said she’d get me one of the doctors.

The place was now absolutely packed, and it took several minutes for a doctor to become available. There were several private nooks carved out in this room with drapes hanging in front of them for private examinations. By the time a doctor did come to see me, none of these spaces were open. “So, what can I do for you?” he asked. “Oh” he replied curiously after I told him.

He led me down a long hall to the church reading room, the only empty room on the entire floor, which just happened to have no doors. Just a massive open space that anyone could storm right into.  Statues of Jesus in various states of terror and pain on the cross were the room’s primary decorations.

“Drop your pants,” he said.

Now, I’m definitely not Christian, never have been, but there’s something strange about presenting another man your testicles for inspection in front of stigmata-stricken Jesus.

Anyway I dropped my pants and the doctor immediately began to look confused. He seemed to have no clue what he was looking for. Something tells me Lyme disease isn’t a common ailment people bring to the free clinic – especially in Southern California.

After about five minutes of genital inspection by both the doc and Jesus, he finally said he needed to consult the head doctor of the clinic. The doctor said this, not Jesus.

Anyway, we left the church reading room and headed back to the main treatment area. The doctor sat me at a desk while he conferenced with several other doctors nearby. They were laughing quite a bit and drawing pictures.

Several minutes later, three doctors came over and showed me a clipboard with two pictures of ticks – one round and robust the other tiny. I pointed to the tiny one.

“Well, that is the type of tick that carries Lyme disease in this area,” the head of the trio told me.  “I can give you the anti-biotics and you can take them preemptively. But that’s gonna cost you.”

Getting a lab test would be even more expensive. Back where we started.

The doctors assured me that the bulls-eye is very noticeable, even painful, when you’re afflicted with it. They didn’t think I had the disease, but I should come again if any kind of rash developed. I said I thought I’d be fine.

I haven’t noticed any rashes or advanced neurological damage yet. At least no more than usual.

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As some people may have noticed, I’ve been pathetically absent from my own digs as of late – in large part because I recently completed a cross-country move from Los Angeles to Washington D.C.

I’ve been predictably surprised by my new, strange habitat: It’s a bizarre place where Subway restaurants serve pizza, where bars offer “rail” drinks (instead of “well”), and where Lay’s peddles a dill-pickle-flavored variety of potato chips. (Also, if you couldn’t tell, I do a lot of eating and drinking.)

But beyond my own fascination with the peculiarities of various food and beverage purveyors, there’s an interesting dichotomy in the power and age dynamics at work in each town. Both L.A. and D.C. are one-industry towns, revolving around entertainment and government, respectively. The faces of those industries, and those who actually wield power within them, are almost hilariously opposed.

The likes of Selena Gomez, Zac Efron and the stars of “Twilight” are all visible power players in Hollywood. Throw their faces on your vehicle and it’s likely to be at least moderately successful. It’s a culture that fawns over youth and discards older stars with relative ease. But the people (and by that, I of course mean white dudes) who actually hold the puppet strings – the studio bosses, news directors, magazine editors, etc. are of course much older. Viacom chair Sumner Redstone is 87, for example.

In D.C. though, it’s the old, white men who are the public faces of the government (minus, you know, one very-visible guy who is less white). It’s a culture where age is often considered an asset. Take this report from my new place of employ, which finds:

But the culture on Capitol Hill not only makes it taboo to question older lawmakers’ ability, it also rewards their longevity with roles as influential committee chairmen and a greater share of earmarks. …

“This job is the only job in the country where you can keep working even if your staff [members] are literally carrying you into the office,” said one former Senate staffer who worked for Sen. Arlen Specter. The 80-year-old Democrat from Pennsylvania recently lost his primary bid for a 6th term.

And predictably, it’s the young staffers doing the carrying who weird enormous power behind the scenes – a fact emphasized by a recent New York Times magazine article, All the Obama 20-Somethings:

When Barack Obama’s presidential campaign began on a clear and frigid day in Springfield, Ill., in 2007, the young men and women who would shovel snow in Iowa, crash on couches in Pittsburgh and pass up grad school to join it could not quite grasp that two years later their journey would end at the Oval Office. They also could not imagine all of the unseen difficulties that would await them — everything from a cratering economy and an attempt at a Christmas Day terrorist attack to plummeting poll numbers as their president fell to earth. Showing up to work each day at the most prestigious address in America can feel a bit like finals week in college. They are always on call, always working hard.

I know all too well how easily age can work against you when you’re applying for anything beyond an entry-level position - a fact that is only amplified in an economy where recent grads find themselves competing with workers in their sectors who have been laid off and possess years more experience. It’s weirdly comforting to know, then, that one sector that values and encourages young people is also one of the most powerful.

Rather than burden their children with the daunting task of caring for them as they age, some baby boomers may be considering an extreme form of “relief.” Suicide.

Psychiatrist Mark Goulston says he’s been approached by some middle-aged patients who say they’d rather “take a bottle of pills” than inconvenience their children.

Dr. Goulston blames the problem on the impatient nature of “millennials” – the offspring of baby boomers – a trait he says was passed down from the boomers themselves.

Adding to their angst is their own experience of taking care of elderly parents, which sometimes leads to feelings of resentment. Baby boomers don’t want their own children to grow to resent and begrudge them when they get old and feeble.

There’s a video exchange between Goulston and CNN’s Don Lemon that’s worth watching, but won’t lift your spirits much.

Add to this don’t-be-a-burden dilemma — and it IS a dilemma that crosses the mind of everyone over 60 and most folks who have a parent over 60 — the bizarre situation of estate taxes right now and the whole business of dying gets seriously complicated. It was okay last year, when you knew estate taxes were magically going to disappear on January 1, 2010, so the focus was on staying alive until then.

Larry Ellison, the Oracle founder who reportedly will buy the team, would seem to be the last person to ground the franchise in the community. He took over companies, including that of a friend’s, and kicked most of their employees to the curb. He is nobody’s idea of Mr. Nice Guy; in fact, he is my idea of Mr. Mean (and no, that Mr. Mean). He loves yachting. Photographs often feature him scowling. And he is mega-billionaire.

And yet, like the Chronicle’s great Peter Hartlaub, I think Elllison could revive our beloved and woebegone Warriors. As Hartlaub writes,

The greatest friend of a sports fan is an incredibly rich owner with a huge ego who gets angry easily, takes defeat personally and loves living in the region. Larry Ellison with his Oracle billions is an incredible five-for-five. It’s like genetic scientists created this man to own the Warriors, combining Mark Cuban’s enthusiasm for sports, Paul Allen’s money and Genghis Khan’s instinct to behead anything that gets in his way. Best of all, this is a guy who appears to have spent much of his life motivated by vengeance. And if the late George Steinbrenner taught us nothing, vengeance wins championships.

Hartlaub makes a bunch of good suggestions to improve the franchise, such as not moving the team to San Francisco, its original Bay Area home, and bringing back Greg Papa. (No, Papa is not well known nationally, but the local reference is unavoidable). In this spirit, I will offer two more suggestions:

Change the name to the Oakland Warriors. Just saying the name feels good. It’s poetic and weirdly appropriate. Even more important, this new name would ground the team in the city in which it plays all of its games. This isn’t the the 1960s and ’70s. The team is no longer playing in San Diego, Palm Springs, or San Francisco. (The team actually played in two different venues in The City, at the Cow Palace and the Civic Auditorium, a situation that made it difficult for even die-hard fans like my dad to wonder where the hell was playing that night). It plays in Oakland. The team’s new name should reflect that reality.

Bring back kids hoops at halftime. As I mentioned earlier, the atmosphere at Warriors game before the game and at halftime resemble nothing so much as that of a sexed-up jazz nightclub. The band strikes up, the singer belts out her tunes, and the Floridians-ball-girls-cum-Warriors Girls do their thing. Yes, the Bay Area is a haven for singles, but the region at night is not one big lounge. Plenty of couples have children, so let local kids run around at halftime on the court and hoop it up like they once did. Unless my memory is faulty, fans got a big kick out of seeing 10- and 12-year-old boys and girls steal the ball, go up for a lay up, miss, and repeat the whole scenario. Basketball was brought back to its roots. So should the Warriors franchise.

There was after-dark violence in Oakland, contained within a fairly small area, following the involuntary manslaughter verdict of transit officer Johannes Mehserle in the death of Oscar Grant, reported on TV news across the country. Oakland takes a lot of guff. There were rallies in support of Mehserle, and gatherings in remembrance of Grant, and worries because many wanted a murder conviction. Following the verdict, a crowd estimated at fewer than 1,000 gathered downtown for a peaceful demonstration of their dissatisfaction with the verdict. A small group of about 100, after the sun went down, turned to vandalism and looting. There were 78 arrests; three-quarters of those arrested were not from Oakland. It’s a sadly familiar story, especially in the way it was reported; what was reported was far from the whole story.

Interestingly, right in the middle of the troubled block is the headquarters of an organization called Not In Our Town (NIOT). “We thought it was important to set the record straight,” the NIOT folks said in an e-mail today, “by filming the encouraging community response taking place right outside our door. Here are the young people of Oakland expressing their love of this city, and their commitment to keeping the peace, no matter their reaction to the verdict.”

NIOT is a national movement that “encourages and connects people who are responding to hate and building more inclusive communities.” On their home page is a U.S. map featuring recent hate incidents (red dots) and recent anti-hate action (green dots.) The green dots outnumber the red dots, which is a heartening development to recognize, although the red dots tend to get better press.

This space is a certified member of NIOT. This space is regularly fingered as a Pollyanna. But the active (as opposed to the certified, who are often wimps) NIOT people are not Pollyannas, but courageous and simultaneously gentle souls. Check them out. You may want a NIOT in your town.

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On July 3rd, 2009 a piece I wrote entitled “Mommy the Gays are Coming” was published on the GLBT magazine The Advocate’s website. The piece detailed the major advances in gay rights in the ultra-right-wing, Catholic nation of Colombia, and included original photos from Bogota’s gay pride march — the largest gay event in Colombia’s history. The piece was 600 words and included six photos (not to mention international reporting in a country that can be fairly dangerous — I was mugged at knifepoint days before the story was published) for which I was promised $175.

Fine.

I completed my piece, it went up on the site, I sent my invoice, W-2 and signed all the relevant contracts. Months went by and no check came. After a couple of months, I wrote the relevant parties at The Advocate and their parent company Here Media to see what was going on.

“Thank you for contacting our office,” I was told. “Your paperwork is being reviewed and processed at this time. A payment will be issued a.s.a.p.”

No payment came. Still more months went by.

Making matters worse, at the time I wrote this story I had just lost my job at the LA CityBeat after that paper folded. 175 bucks might not seem like much, but I really needed it at the time. I personally financed my trip to Colombia, hoping I could dig up the kind of stories that would allow me to establish relationships with new and different kinds of magazines. My plan worked, but little did I know I’d be starting a relationship with a mag that doesn’t pay its writers.

On December 16, 2009, after sending off multiple tersely worded emails demanding payment, I received a reply from Michael W.E. Edwards, Director of Editorial Operations for Here Media.

Matthew, first off, I’m sorry that you’ve probably been getting only “form letter” types of statements from our Accounting department in regard to your due payment. That’s why my department is hoping to do a better job at communicating with the contributors and vendors that Editorial works with.

And second, I want to thank you for the extraordinary patience you’ve shown us as we at Here Media recover from an economically difficult 2009.

Our sales team, on all fronts, is reporting that 2010 will be a much better year. That said, we are working hard at catching up with all our valued freelancers and other vendors, and I know that you will be paid in the near future. We are making progress and look forward to fulfilling our obligation to you shortly. I wish I could give you a specific time line for payment, but I simply don’t have the insight for when our Accounting team will be able to complete its catch-up task.

I know this isn’t the news that you were hoping for, especially now that the holidays are here and since your payment is so many months past due. But I do hope that you will bear with us, because we are committed to making good on payment to you and all of our contributors.

Thanks,
Michael

So the promises of payment I’d been receiving were simply form letters, presumably sent to a bunch of other freelancers The Advocate had been stiffing.

Nearly eight months have gone by since that letter and still no check. I recently emailed Edwards again and he referred me to the company’s finance department. They checked their computers and saw that, indeed, I was owed $175. They provided no rationale for this negligence and apologetically promised to pay me. Nearly four weeks later the check has still not been mailed. I have called the office of Here Media’s CFO repeatedly over the past few weeks. Each time I receive more promises of payment that go undelivered.

In short: The Advocate owes me money, they know they owe me money and have refused to pay me for over a year.

A slightly modified version of the piece originally appeared on Fishbowl LA

Why not fight racism with reverse racism? If a racist and corrupt system discriminates against minorities then one means of righting this wrong is to reverse the racism by discriminating for instead of against said minorities. This is precisely what the University of California system did in its admissions policy until Proposition 209 passed 54% to 45% in 1996, prohibiting the state from discriminating against or giving preferences to anyone on the basis of “race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education or public contracting.”

Here we have the basis for a social experiment in which one set of variables is altered: before 1996 the University of California system discriminated against whites and in favor of minorities in their admissions policy; after 1996 students were admitted based on their merits alone. Opponents of Prop 209—believing that minorities lack the merits to make it on their own—predicted that minority admissions would decrease after 1996. Proponents of 209—believing that minorities are just as smart, creative, and hard working as any other group—predicted the opposite. What happened?

Admissions for the Fall of 2010 for the University of California reveals that the number of minorities in both absolute numbers and percentages exceeds that of 1996:

African American            1996: 4% (1,628)                  2010: 4.2% (2,624)

Latino                         1996: 15.4% (5,744)             2010: 23% (14,081)

Asians                         1996: 29.8% (11,085)                       2010: 37.5% (22,877)

Native Americans            1996: 0.9% (360)                  2010: 0.8% (531)

Whites                         1996: 44% (16,465)              2010: 34% (20,807)

So it would appear that a meritocracy in educational admissions works, and in this (the University of California), one of the largest educational laboratories in the world. Blacks and Latinos in particular do not need affirmative action, special favors, handouts, proportional set asides, or any other discriminatory practice in order to succeed. And how insulting to ever to have implied that they do! Did anyone believe that the only way minorities could succeed in American education would be for the government to step in and order educational institutions to discriminate on their behalf? Yes, they did, and they still are: the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action filed a lawsuit this year to overturn Prop 209. Why? According to the suit: “The percentage of Latina/o, black and Native American students in the UC as a whole has not kept pace with the rising percentage of those groups among high school graduates of the state.”

So the purpose of higher education is to be an extension of K-12 education, matching percentages precisely or else? And that “or else” should include a top-down, government enforced racist policy of discrimination based on high school racial demographics? Is this what American higher education has come down to? If the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action has its way it will, because, in fact, the full name and mission of this organization, according to it’s web page, is: “The Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration, and Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary (BAMN) is building the new civil rights movement. We are a primarily student- and youth-based organization of leaders in our schools and communities, committed to making real the promises of American democracy and equality.” Read that ominous acronym again: By Any Means Necessary. If the law is not overturned, what other means do these folks have in mind? Violence? The threat of violence?

I am white. My “race” lost a full 10 percentage points in U.C. admissions after the passage of Prop 209. Will BAMN step up and demand that the U.C. admissions office set aside a fixed number of admits for whites regardless of SAT scores, GPAs, student essays, and the like? Somehow I doubt it, but if they did, and I were applying to college, I would give the same response that any self-respecting individual should today to such racist policies:

“No thanks. I don’t need your racist discriminatory policies to succeed in life. And how insulting that you would think otherwise—I can make it on my own without your snobby elitist attitude that without your help I will fail. I don’t need you or any other patronizing thugs to threaten a university to let me in or else they will be in violation of a law that could land them in jail for choosing to not admit me. And if that were the reason they did let me in, I wouldn’t go. I am smart. I am creative. I am hard working. I am responsible for my actions. I will make my own way in life, and if I succeed then I succeed on my own merits, and if I fail then I fail on my own lack of merits. Period. If you don’t understand that, then get lost.”

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Would soccer catch on in the U.S if our TV screens were bigger? Maybe so, but I still doubt it. Twenty-two — until you start tossing them out for misbehavior  — guys kicking a tiny ball up and down a field at warp speed without even the excitement of racking up a goal in regulation so you can stop and catch your breath, or a commercial break so you can go to the bathroom, I’m just not sure soccer will ever make it in America. Of course, your TV screen is probably bigger than ours, which is OK. On the giant screens at bars and coffee shops all along San Francisco’s Fillmore Street Sunday there was an awful lot of hoopla. There may have been some business for the restaurant owners, but it looked like a great deal more hooping and hollering than drinking.

It is safe to say that this space has been into soccer longer than any other T/S space. Dating, actually, from the day that #1 son came home from hanging out at some local playground circa 1968, and we said, “You’ve been doing what? A round, black-&-white ball you just kick? Soccer moms had not yet been invented, but this one was, at that moment. Three kids, a combined total of about 36 years at a minimum of 2 or 3 games per week; you do the math. The in-house soccer dad coached so many of them that he and his co-coach had to coach the local high school coach, who had never heard of soccer until then either. But our scruffy, inner city team beat the hoity-toity suburban high school for the state title in 1970-something (it’s all a blur) so it was certainly worth it.

Pro soccer, though, that’s another whole deal. By now every kid in the U.S. has kicked around a soccer ball, half of them are addicts, and still they grow up to be non-fans. Go figure. I think it boils down to the screen size, the warp speed and the lack of bathroom commercial time.

And it’s too bad. The primary emotion I recall from about a century-worth of soccer-game watching was empathy: everybody felt sorry for the goalie’s mom. Didn’t matter if your team scored the goal, you still felt sorry for the goalie’s mom.

The world needs a little more empathy. Meanwhile this space has to quit typing and send condolences to our good friends in Amsterdam.

San Francisco Chronicle writer Bob Egelko summed up the latest on one stage:

The federal judge overseeing a challenge to the “don’t ask, don’t tell” law, scheduled for trial in Southern California next week, has ruled in favor of a gay rights group on a crucial issue – how much evidence the government needs to justify the ban on openly homosexual members of the armed forces.

Obama administration lawyers have argued that courts must let “don’t ask, don’t tell” stand if they find that Congress could have reasonably concluded that excluding gays and lesbians would make the military more effective – the standard most favorable to supporters of the 1993 law.

But U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips of Riverside, in her final pretrial ruling, said Wednesday that higher court rulings in recent years have raised the bar for the government to justify laws that single out gays and lesbians for harsher treatment. Because “don’t ask, don’t tell” intrudes on “personal and private lives” and “implicates fundamental rights,” Phillips wrote, the Justice Department must show that the ban serves an important public purpose that the military could not achieve some other way.

That principle comes from the 2003 Supreme Court ruling overturning state laws against private homosexual conduct, and from a 2008 ruling by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco allowing a lesbian officer to challenge her discharge from the Air Force, Phillips said.

Her ruling opens the door for plaintiffs in the case to put gay and lesbian former service members on the witness stand to testify about how being thrown out of the military because of “don’t ask, don’t tell” damaged them. The federal law requires that gays and lesbians who acknowledge their sexual orientation be discharged from the military. Superior officers are barred from asking service members about their orientation.

The plaintiffs, the Log Cabin Republicans gay organization, plan to present researchers who contend the policy harms the military by promoting concealment and divisiveness while excluding qualified personnel. (It is, of course, the Republicans who are threatening a Senate filibuster of a military appropriations bill that includes a repeal measure…)

The Obama administration tried to bar the testimony, arguing that it was irrelevant, and urged Phillips to postpone the trial while Congress considers the president’s proposal to repeal “don’t ask, don’t tell.” President Obama has called the law discriminatory but says he must defend it as long as it is on the books.

On the marriage front, which currently has seen some states legalizing same-sex unions, some banning them and in California a suit to overturn the voter-approved ban, more state/federal convolutions are underway. Associated Press legal affairs writer Denise Lavoie Friday summarized what’s been going on in Massachusetts:

A key part of a law denying married gay couples federal benefits has been thrown out the window in Massachusetts, the first state to legalize gay marriage. The ball now lies in the White House’s court, which must carefully calculate the next move by an administration that has faced accusations it has not vigorously defended the law of the land.

President Barack Obama has said repeatedly that he would like to see the federal Defense of Marriage Act, known as DOMA, repealed. But the Justice Department has defended the constitutionality of the law, which it is required to do.

The administration was silent Friday on whether it would appeal rulings by U.S. District Judge Joseph Tauro. Spokespeople for the White House and the Justice Department said officials are still reviewing the rulings.

DOMA defines marriage as between a man and a woman, prevents the federal government from recognizing gay marriages and allows states to deny recognition of same-sex unions performed elsewhere. Since the law passed in 1996, many states have instituted their own bans on gay marriage, and a handful have allowed the practice.

And over at the annual General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church USA, meeting in Minneapolis

…delegates again approved ordaining openly gay or lesbian clergy. The measure now goes to the presbyteries, or local jurisdictions, where previous General Assembly resolutions to ordain gays and lesbians have been rejected. The General Assembly also debated but did not pass a resolution that would have changed the definition of marriage from a union between a man and a woman to a union of two people.

This Presbyterian writer can tell you that getting individual presbyteries — that’s the regional groups — to approve what the General Assembly delegates just approved is no simple matter. There are plenty of Christians, not to mention less than tolerant folks of every creed and color, down the rabbit hole.

‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ foes win legal victory.

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Radiation from the A-bomb test witnessed by my then-Marine husband in the early 1950s was registered on a small badge worn around his neck. They double-timed from foxholes toward the site of the blast. As far as we and the U.S. government know, all of those guys went on to lead long and healthy lives — and we went on to deadlier bombs anyway. We do now know a little more about those sorts of radiation damage.

We don’t know much about the tiny emissions from cellphones, iPhones, cellular antennas, texters, Skypers, whatever. The suggestion that any of those cyber-issues could possibly cause harm draws scoffs and derision and denials, but the truth is we simply don’t know. Some folks would still like to find out; maybe even find out before harm is done rather than after. An ongoing mini-battle in San Francisco is typical of such citizen struggles everywhere:

The increasing popularity of smart phones is pitting companies looking to expand their coverage against city residents concerned about the dangers presented by a growing number of cellular antennas.

Nearly every week, the city Planning Commission hears from a company looking to add to the thousands of cellular antennas already in the city. And, like clockwork, local residents turn out to fight the plans.

“These towers should be away from residences, away from schools and away from other vulnerable populations,” said Doug Loranger, who, as founder of the San Francisco Neighborhood Antenna-Free Union, has been fighting the cellular companies for a decade.

That’s not easy to do in a city as densely packed as San Francisco, where hills and tall buildings have long made radio transmission a challenge.

The crowds that jammed local stores looking to buy the new Apple iPhones last month demonstrate another part of the problem. San Francisco has a reputation as one of the most tech-savvy cities in the country, and the people buying the various new smart phones want fast and easy access to the Internet on their handheld devices, which means more demand for service.

This demand for service drives the rush to install more antennas and modify the existing ones. As long as they meet emission standards set in 1996, they are deemed fine, and cannot be challenged on the basis of health, a frustrating reality for potential challengers. Because that actually is the issue: whether — or at what point — emissions can indeed become damaging to one’s health. And though radiofrequency radiation emitted by the antennas has not been proven to have any damaging effects, activist Beverly Choe, whose children attend school near one such installation says, “it doesn’t seem prudent to add more radiation until we’re sure of the effects.”

“People want service where they live, where they work and where they play,” said Rod De La Rosa, a spokesman for T-Mobile. “We’re trying to roll out more high-speed data transmission by increasing the size of the pipe and not just for voice.”

T-Mobile is just one of the service providers looking to boost their presence in San Francisco. Just last week, Clearwire, a new company providing wireless data service only, came to the Planning Commission with requests to add antennas to existing sites in Bernal Heights and by San Francisco General Hospital.

“Starting last year, we’ve had a big increase in requests for modifications (of existing sites) and for new antennas,” said Jonas Ionin, who oversees cellular antenna requests for the city’s Planning Commission. “What we’re finding today is that the increases aren’t necessarily based on voice traffic, but on data downloads.”

The city already is home to 709 cell sites, some with as many as 12 separate antennas. Although many of the recent requests have been for upgrades and additions to those existing sites, there is also a growing call for new spots for cellular antennas, which means more battles to come.

Those continuing battles have one interesting aspect that other battles can’t always claim. No one is waiting to find out who’s right. “The funny thing is that people call me on their cell phones to complain about the new installations,” said Diego Sanchez, a city planner. We may all be addle-brained from telecommunicating before we find out where it’s coming from. A lot of us grew up in asbestos-infused schools and homes, and we’re probably all eating mercury-infused seafood (not to mention drinking petroleum-infused water); life is hazardous to one’s health.

Tension over cellular antennas mounts in city.