Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish

Steve Jobs died today.  The obituaries (carefully written years ago and periodically updated), old features, and unflinching profiles have been circulating around the Internet.  There's no denying that Jobs was a controversial figure, but he was also one of the most influential people of my generation, of my own life.  This may be incorrect, but I think my generation has been the first to grow up and be educated in the Digital Revolution.  We had personal computers in our homes, something that was almost inconceivable in previous decades.  I learned to use computers on what must have been a Mac II, which looked like something out of Star Wars--boxy, futuristic in a dated way, sort of beige-ish.  I'm writing this now on my 2004 PowerBook 15-inch, which has survived two separate water spilling incidents, several cross-country and trans-Atlantic moves, and a strange and unfortunate infestation by tiny ants in Sierra Leone.  The iPod Classic freed me from my cumbersome CD collections.  The iPhone has kept me from getting lost over the past three months or so and has allowed me to explore San Francisco in ways I never thought possible.  And so on.  Without Macintosh, I don't know what my life would be like. That sounds a bit dramatic, but it's true.

I've come across four interesting articles on Steve Jobs today that offer different perspectives on the man.  His 1985 interview in Playboy (don't worry, it's safe for work) studies the young entrepreneur and explores his views on excellence, design, and innovation.  One great moment details his time at a birthday party for a nine-year-old.  He gave the boy a Mac for his birthday and spent the evening teaching him to use it, unfazed by the presence of Andy Warhol and Keith Haring.  When asked why he seemed more at ease with a kid (side note: I wish that were MY ninth birthday party!), he responded: "Older people sit down and ask, 'What is it?' but the boy asks 'What can I do with it?'"  In a 2008 profile in Esquire, Tom Junod looks at Jobs' control-freak nature and the pall of mortality that tinged Apple in the wake of his cancer diagnosis in 2004.  Delving more into the inner, perhaps subconscious, motivations of the adopted Jobs, Junod does not flinch away from showing the ugly sides and the contradictions of Jobs' persona.  In The New York Times, Andrew Ross Sorkin talks about Jobs' lack of (public) philanthropy--I can only hope that he left a sizeable amount of his $8.3 billion to a good cause or causes, or that his family starts a foundation.  Finally, a short piece from Ken Auletta in The New Yorker today discusses his legacy.  The article mentions his commencement speech at Stanford, which I have embedded below. 

Mr. Jobs, you were not an easy man, and you did not choose an easy path.  You lived a contradictory existence--you could mention traveling through India, Bob Dylan, and the Whole Earth Catalog and at the same time be the man who could call some of his own employees "fucking losers" and had little interest in giving back.  Your vision was extraordinary.  Your humanity was flawed.  Thank you for all that you've done.

A Taste of Home

There's a new video up on Nowness, a "luxury storytelling" site owned by LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, that shows a sort of everyday experience of the Thacher School, where I grew up and attended high school.  It's by Lisa Eisner.  Although it's a bit earnest (the photo on the home page of the Thacher site, with the kid ring spearing with his tongue out is maybe more typical), it captures the beauty of Ojai, the bond between horse and rider, and the stillness I got to experience everyday exploring trails and practicing Gymkhana with my horse, Shara.  It makes me yearn for home and ache to ride again.  I miss that companionship, both human and equestrian, and the serenity that those afternoons afforded.



Thacher: Frontier Schooling from Lisa Eisner on Nowness.com.

Glancing Blows

Adultery Sundays

I did write a global health post on Friday; I just didn't get around to sharing it until today.  I discuss the outcome and results of the UN High Level Meeting on Non-Communicable Diseases (preview: they were disappointing). 

I'll be posting soon on the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, at which I spent some time this weekend.  I saw Robert Plant, Band of Heathens, Hugh Laurie, Patty Griffin, and Gillian Welch.  So, I'll share some highlights and photos this week.

Grace gave me permission to share her and Dan's wedding video, so if you're interested, take a look.  It was a beautiful ceremony and a kick-ass party.  The prep was a lot of fun too--if busy and hectic.  All around, so full of joy.



Grace & Dan 1 of 2 from Kellen Keene on Vimeo.

An Unwaged Afternoon in Dolores Park

We've been having a bit of an Indian Summer (Michael's Little Summer, Gypsy Summer, or tiger in autumn, depending on who you talk to) in San Francisco.  Interspersed with drizzle and fog, of course, but SF will be SF.  My sister and I took a walk the other night in the Marina, and this will only make sense to Thacher alums, but it was nine-thirty to ten weather.*  That certain smell of cooling asphalt, a slight warm breeze, and everyone wandering around in the dark.  To use her phrase, a mindset and not a period of time. That's how it feels these days in the Bay.  I returned to Dolores Park last Tuesday.  What follows is what I jotted down in between turning pages of Huck Finn.

There never seems to be an empty moment in Dolores Park.  Hordes of Mission burghers, maybe bartenders, or artists, or street performers taking a break now the tourist season is over, or those of us in the 9.1%.  Grass is ubiquitous and banal (legal or otherwise).  Vendors call out clearly to hawk their wares: hash brownies, pot rice crispies treats, weed lollipops, mushrooms, even acid (really?).  People light up and work their way through handcrafted microbrewed six packs purchased at a premium.  Dogs wander off-leash and sniff around strangers, sometimes leaving behind shit that doesn't get picked up by distracted owners.  In the Marina earlier in the morning, two women all but chased down a runner when her German shepherd pooped on the beach.  Not so here.  Apart from the group of thrift-store junkies with well-designed tattoos, and eccentric hats, and fixed gear bicycles, there are remnants of a counterculture that did not know where to go but here when their revolution went the way of everything else and became a marketing tool.  If you like Communism, antique clocks, or Ann Coulter, they got a t-shirt for that. 

A mysterious fire breaks out somewhere beyond Mission High School, big black plumes drifting eastward.  It takes ten minutes to hear the sirens.  Fifteen later, the news choppers show up and hover like black flies over the scene.  No one barely looks, a few shouts of, "Fire! Fire!" are in jest, disconnected from the reality over on Haight and Fillmore, where windows bent and then burst out, thirty-one lost their homes.  A woman nonchalantly removes her jeans and sits cross-legged in the sun in her purple underwear, all the while talking on her phone.  A man tripping on something or other raves about the reggae culture and wheels around the guy freestyling over a portable speaker.  Deadlocked and confused, he reaches out with a laid-back desperation for someone to understand his epiphany.  Afropop blasts from a corner.  A drunk old man swigs from a wine bottle and sneezes, almost compulsively, for five minutes.  The sound of clicking lighters, flint on metal.  The sound of clicking iPhones.  The sound of clicking bicycle gears.

Frisbees and acrobats spin across the lawn.  Girls tell quiet little details of their ordinary lives and discuss fake IDs while lighting up a pipe.  Young men on OKCupid dates teach young women how to use fancy camera features, preening their blogging credentials.  Old Chinese women wander through the groups with big rice bags, collecting glass for deposit money.  A Latino man advertises his ice cream cart with jangling bells, another man with a cooler and newsboy cap sells cold beer.  Informal economies spring up anywhere there are people.  Cyclists rip by, too close to the sedentary.  Platinum blondes in a stars-and-stripes caps, colored feather tattoo peeking out from tank tops, chugging Newcastles.  Two sweet-looking lesbians with punk haircuts and tricked-out bikes talk behind their hands, write in journals, and smoke rollies.  Young men, shirts unbuttoned and beards perfectly unkempt, split watermelon beers between them and ignore their strategically-placed academic work.  A man in a red beard sips a 40 and plays guitar badly and enthusiastically, and you have to love him for it.  An older black man in a cycling cap smokes a blunt, foot resting on his handlebars, holding a banana to eat later.  Indian Summer, all in their own ways.  The smoke dies down, and no one seems to pay it any mind. 
























*Nine-thirty to ten, or 9:30pm-10:00pm.  Perhaps the only true free period of time on the weekdays at boarding school, it was the slot between study hall and check-in (AKA you're in the dorm for the night OR ELSE) when you could play pool at the SUB (RIP, Student Union Building), eat vending machine candy, hang with your buddies, or MO with your SO.  Mostly good, clean fun, though subject to increasing restrictions since my graduation year.  Poor kids.  I mean, that was the only time I could justify talking to upper-class students (i.e. sophomores, juniors, and seniors) when I was a wee freshman.  Almost half of your time is spent walking across the campus, anyway.  Can't get in too much trouble.


Video courtesy of Ms. Catherine Robinson.  

Music Break

For your listening pleasure in the AM, Fleet Foxes played on David Letterman last night.  Ignore ol' Dave at the end getting the name of the song wrong.  They kill it.  So hauntingly beautiful.




And if you want something a little more upbeat to pep up your morning, try out Tinariwen, a Tuareg desert blues group.  They have a strange little history too.

Glancing Blows