Just accept that you can't know what I'm feeling

“I know what you’re going through.”

No, you don’t.

“This will get better in time.”

Then give me an injection of that shit now … but not too much: I don’t want to overdose and end up dead.

“It’s God’s will.”

How do you know? Are you divine? Sorry, but I can’t see the halo over your head. And if you follow up with “God works in mysterious ways,” that just goes to show you don’t understand it. And if you don’t understand, you can’t help.

“Everything happens for a reason.”

Tell that to the victims of the Holocaust. Or the indigenous people who have been slaughtered around the world. Or a cancer victim. Or the family of an Alzheimer’s patient. Yes, everything happens for a reason, and that “reason” is simple: People can be heartless; life can be cruel. I don’t need to be reminded of that, thank you, especially not in my present state of mind.

Maybe platitudes help some people. I don’t know. I can’t get inside other people’s heads and feel what they’re feeling – which is, really, precisely the point here.

Yes, you may have gone through something similar to what’s happening to me. Maybe your experience was, by some objective standard, “worse” than mine. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to live through the Holocaust, the Inquisition, the purges conducted throughout history in the name of power, gold, religious or racial “purity,” egoism. I don’t know what it’s like to lose a loved one to war, or to an accident involving a drunken driver. All I know is what I feel right now.

And you don’t. You just don’t.

I could tell you, philosophically speaking, that no two people go through exactly the same experiences, and that no two people react the same way, because even though we’re all human, we’re not cookie-cutter automatons with the same perceptions, emotional triggers, etc., etc. We’re all unique combinations of DNA, neurons, protoplasm and whatever else makes us … individuals.

But that’s head knowledge. It’s only good so far as it goes – which isn’t very far when it comes to personal pain (and all pain is, in the end, deeply personal). It doesn’t really matter to me when I’m in the midst of it. What matters is what I feel, and no matter how much you and I might have in common, no matter how precisely I communicate, you can’t possibly feel exactly what I’m feeling in this present moment. You can’t even know what I’m feeling. In the midst of great pain, definitions are meaningless.

And that’s why platitudes don’t work. They don’t help. Because they represent a presumption that you know what I’m feeling – that you can define it and that you somehow understand “how this works.” You don’t. I don’t even understand how it works, and I’m going through it. What you may (or may not) understand is what you went through, and I don’t presume to understand that. Because I’m not you.

No matter how close we may be, I’m not inside your mind. I’m not experiencing your pain. The only pain I can feel is what’s inside me, even if I’m in pain over your situation, that’s still my pain, not yours.

“We are all alone, born alone, die alone, and — in spite of True Romance magazines — we shall all someday look back on our lives and see that, in spite of our company, we were alone the whole way. I do not say lonely — at least, not all the time — but essentially, and finally, alone.” — Hunter S. Thompson

He was right. We all experience our emotions – fear, pain, hope, joy – alone. I can express them to you, but you cannot truly share them. You can experience your own feelings called “fear” or “pain” or “hope” or “joy,” but you cannot feel mine the way I feel them. Because you are not me.

Maybe people use platitudes because they want to help. Or because they don’t want to feel helpless. Maybe your suffering is in some way inconvenient to them, or perhaps they feel threatened by it. Or maybe the realization that we are all, at the end of the day, truly alone in the feelings we experience is just too scary to acknowledge. The realization that I’m all alone is, indeed, one of the most frightening things I’ve ever faced.

I’m not wallowing in this. I’m forcing myself to face up to it, so I can figure out how to deal with it. I’m not there yet; I’m a long way from it, and I’m not sure whether I’ll ever get there. But you don’t have a clue what it is to feel these things the way I feel them. You just don’t.

So please acknowledge that. Don’t give me platitudes or pat answers. Don’t say you know how I’m feeling, because you don’t. Don’t try to reassure me. Recognize that there might not be a damned thing you can do to help me or improve my situation; that it’s all on me. Believe me, I there’s a part of me that wishes you could help, because I sure could use it. But no one can help me feel – and even if they could, I wouldn’t wish some of the feelings I’ve endured on the worst of my enemies (thankfully, I don’t have too many of those).

The best thing you can do for me may be the most difficult: Put away the platitudes and have the courage to acknowledge my aloneness – even if it forces you to acknowledge your own. That’s the only way any sort of understanding between us can begin.

Police union letter puts pride before public safety

You’re butthurt by something someone said, by a pair of socks, so now you’re going to put your own bruised dignity ahead of public safety? Seriously?

I understand why police officers are offended by Kaepernick’s socks (which depicted cartoon pigs wearing police hats). But that doesn’t give them the right to jeopardize public safety.

As a journalist, I could get offended by a lot of what’s said about people in my profession. That doesn’t mean I’ll stop covering newsworthy stories involving those who make those comments. That’s what I’m paid to do, and it’s what I’m expected to do, ethically speaking.

In simple terms, you do your job. Period. That’s professionalism.

Professional conduct is even more crucial when it comes to public safety. How will the officers in the Santa Clara police union feel if they refuse to show up work a 49ers game and someone gets assaulted on what should have been their watch?

I know how I’d feel. Pretty damned guilty.

Yet this is exactly what the Santa Clara police union is doing. In a letter to the 49ers, the union stated, “If the 49ers organization fails to take action to stop this type of inappropriate behavior it could result in police officers choosing not to work at your facilities. The board of directors of the Santa Clara Police Officer’s Association has a duty to protect its members and work to make all of their working environments free of harassing behavior.”

“Harassing behavior”? From one guy in uniform on the sidelines? If this isn't an overreaction, I don't know what is. Kaepernick's not trying to foment a riot here, and even if he were, does anyone really think that his comments will cause a mass public uprising against police working at Levi's Stadium? Get real. Fans are far more likely to vent their anger at the referees, and when's the last time an official was assaulted at an NFL game?

According to a report by NBCBayArea, about 70 officers volunteer to work these games as security personnel, but about half of them may not show up at the 49ers' next game, on Dec. 12 – despite having agreed to do so.

Regardless of how you view Kaepernick’s behavior, he didn’t issue any threats (of harassment or anything else) toward police officers. Nevertheless, the union responded by issuing a threat of its own toward the 49ers. Worse, when union president Frank Saunders was told officers from other police forces might be hired instead, his response was to warn that such an action might run afoul of his union's contract. 

In other words: If we don't want to do the job, we'll do our best not to let anyone else do it, either.

Imagine a doctor refusing to treat a cardiac patient because he works for a company that – for instance – discriminates against women. Even if the doctor were off-duty, he or she would certainly treat someone in severe distress. And there would be no question of trying to keep another doctor from intervening because (gasp) that doctor didn't belong to a union.

Or imagine a gay firefighter walking away from a burning warehouse because it belonged to company that employed a single homophobic worker. Just one. That’s unthinkable. Yet it’s akin to what the police union is doing here in threatening to punish the 49ers for the behavior of a single employee. But who’ll really be punished if they fail to show up for work and a crime is committed? It won’t be Kaepernick or even the 49ers, it will be the victim of that crime – some individual who may even have a ton of respect for the police.

But that shouldn’t matter. The police are sworn to protect everyone, not just people they happen to like – or even people who happen to like them. In a way, their reaction to Kaepernick bolsters his point: Wasn’t he saying that some officers are more concerned with their own prejudices than they are with doing their job properly?

Kaepernick’s behavior shouldn’t enter into the equation because, no matter how offensive you may find his speech, it’s not against the law. In fact, it’s protected, so the police should be protecting his right to express himself – even if they find that expression offensive – not potentially putting others at risk because they don’t like what he said.

To his credit, the Santa Clara police chief issued a statement saying exactly this: “As distasteful as his actions are, these actions are protected by the Constitution. Police officers are here to protect the rights of every person, even if we disagree with their position. Police officers have sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution.”

The chief, Michael Sellers, emphasized that “the safety of our community is our highest priority.” As it should be.

Apparently some in the police union don’t agree – which supports the point Kaepernick's critics have been making: Don’t make blanket statements that all cops are jerks. Such statements are flat-out wrong. There are good cops, and there are bad cops. There are those who act with professionalism and integrity, and there are those who don’t. The decision on whether or not to show up for work at 49ers games will go a long way toward identifying who’s who.

Note: Paragraphs 9-12 of this entry have been updated with additional information since the initial post.

10 Ways to Recognize a Single-Tasker

Society loves the multitasker, that talented individual who can juggle a dozen projects at once without letting a single one of them touch the ground. It’s impressive and entertaining to watch.

But what about that person’s polar opposite, the single-tasker?

The single-tasker isn’t nearly as much fun to watch. She might cloister herself away in her room, working for hours, days or months on a novel or musical composition. He might spend the entire party talking to a single person he finds fascinating, tuning everyone else out as white noise. How boring is that? Especially when the multitasker is over there regaling half the room with tales of a dozen different adventures or demonstrating how to walk, chew gum and rub his belly simultaneously.

We don’t celebrate the single-taskers as much because we don’t see them in action – and they like it that way. They don’t want to be seen “performing” their tasks, because they aren’t performers. They want to be judged by the end result – and, for the most part, left alone so they can produce it. Once they’re satisfied and ready to unveil it, you’ll be impressed, they suspect. And far more often than not, they’re right.

Single-taskers are those focused individuals who may not be flashy, but they get things done … as long as you give them the space to create and to engage. Many of them are introverts. Some are writers, painters, sculptors, musicians. How do you recognize a single-tasker? Here are some clues to look for.

1. They hate being interrupted. Single-taskers aren’t intrinsically smarter (or less intelligent) than anyone else; they rely on their focus to get things done. Interrupt them, and you’ve neutralized their secret weapon. If the phone’s always ringing or the dog needs to be let out or the boss has called another impromptu meeting, it can stifle the single-tasker’s productivity.
2. They need to get in “the zone” to work their magic. This is why interruptions are so frustrating. Each time one occurs, it breaks the spell, and getting back there might not be easy – especially if they’re continually worrying about when the next interruption might occur.
3. They both love and hate the details. Single-taskers thrive on investigating the minutiae when they’re involved in a project, because they know that attention to detail will make it come alive. On the other hand, they hate dealing with paperwork and other bureaucratic intrusions because these are just another form of (you guessed it) interruption that takes them away from what fascinates them.
4. They prefer one-on-one interactions. They don’t like conference calls or mingling. Chances are, if they’re persuaded to show up for a party, they’ll seek out the person they find most interesting and spend the next three hours in conversation with him or her. The rest of the room might as well not exist. They might appear snobbish or unapproachable if you’re not the “chosen one,” but once you capture their attention, they’ll be riveted by you.
5. They don’t like demands. They might look like prima donnas, because if you start trying to tell them what to do, they’re likely to withdraw. But a demand is, to the single-tasker, a red flag – a warning signal. Demands travel in packs, and the demanding person is their leader.  When one rears its head, others are likely to follow. Think of the boss who hands out one assignment, then changes course midstream and demands something else instead. Or, worse, drops a second task in the single-tasker’s lap before the first one can be completed. This may not be the single-tasker’s worst nightmare, but it’s right up there. If you want to engage a single-tasker, pique his interest. Ask, don’t demand. Invite, don’t compel. Then you’ll get his attention.
6. They prefer to prioritize. One thing at a time, please. The most important (or, to the creative single-tasker, the most inspiring) task should always come first. If it doesn’t, the single-tasker might become discouraged and not get much done at all.
7. They don’t have patience for haggling, bargaining or endless brainstorming. They see such activities as wasting energy on details when they’d much rather be getting to the substance of the matter. If they’re buying a car, they don’t want to spend hours sparring with a salesman who’s adept at mind games and manipulation. They want to get behind the wheel and start driving. If they’re considering a project, they don’t want to spend a whole afternoon in some meeting that’s filled with dead ends and tangents, they want to get down to work. They're open to compromise, they just don't want to waste time spinning their wheels.
8. They look like loners, and they might appear standoffish, but that’s not really accurate. They love to be alone, but alone with … their thoughts, their project, that one special person. It’s not that they don’t want to engage. Precisely the opposite. They just don’t feel comfortable engaging with more than one thing or person at the same time, so if you aren’t that one thing or person, they’re likely to appear cold or distant.
9. They hate being bombarded with choices. Having the freedom to choose is a good thing, and single-taskers value that, to be sure. But they’re far more comfortable with A-or-B choices than they are with considering a slew of varied options, each with its own potential upsides and pitfalls. It’s not that they’re simple minded. Actually, it’s the opposite: They like to analyze things so thoroughly that being confronted with several options at once can send them into overload.
10. They care more about results than appearances. If they appear rude or aloof to “the in crowd” at a party, it’s a price worth paying to engage with someone they find interesting. If they seem stubborn or inflexible, it’s probably because they just don’t want to get into an endless back-and-forth over issues they believe could be resolved with a quick exchange.  If their space is cluttered and messy but they’re making progress on a project they value, that’s life. The results will be worth it, they tell themselves. And, often, they are. 

In memory of David H. Provost, father, mentor and friend

I stood in the imaginary batter’s box at one end of the back yard in Woodland Hills, waiting for the pitch. There were imaginary baserunners, too. And imaginary fielders. Just beyond the “outfield fence,” in the next house over, lived a real live baseball player, Bill Buckner, then at the beginning of his career with the L.A. Dodgers.

But on this field, in our back yard, it was just me, my dad, and a Whiffle ball. He’d come home after work – a day working as the dean of new program development in the Cal State University Chancellor’s Office bracketed by an hour or more in rush hour traffic each way. And he’d play Whiffle ball with his only son in that back yard.

Sometimes, he’d be too tired, and looking back, I can’t really blame him. A man in his forties in a high-pressure job doesn’t always have enough energy to get out of the car, walk through the house and out back to engage in a game of Whiffle ball – or ping pong, a game he taught me how to play. He even built a basketball court, complete with a permanent, regulation 10-foot hoop and a square concrete slab on which to bounce that ball until your hands were caked with dust the consistency of chalk.

I never played competitive basketball, or baseball or, for that matter, ping pong, but my dad gave me the opportunity to try all of them on for size – this 6-foot-8 giant of a man whose own foray into competitive sports consisted, to my knowledge, of some recreational basketball in Australia in the early 1950s, where he did his postgraduate studies. He was so much taller than the rest of the people on the court that he was able to score almost at will in one game and wound up with more points than everyone else combined.

Wilt Chamberlain, eat your heart out.

Fan

But mostly, Dad enjoyed sports from the stands – or in front of the TV. In fact, his love of sports went back long before the age of television: He vividly remembered listening to the 1939 Rose Bowl as an 8-year-old boy and how thrilled he’d been to hear USC score the winning touchdown with a minute left to beat Duke 7-3. It was the only touchdown the Blue Devils had allowed all season, and Dad was a USC fan the rest of his life.

How big a fan? In 1974, we were watching the Trojans play archrival Notre Dame on TV, and Dad was so upset he stormed out of the house when the Irish took a 24-0 lead. I don’t know where he went, but shortly after he left, the Trojans scored a touchdown to make it 24-6; then star running back Anthony Davis returned the second-half kickoff for another score.

“Dad, you’re missing this!” I remember saying aloud, pacing back and forth in front of the TV (just as he would do), waiting for him to come home as USC scored another touchdown, then another, then yet another. By the time he got back, the Trojans had scored 35 points in the third quarter and led 41-24 on their way to a 55-24 victory. Dad had missed the best part of one of the greatest comebacks in sports history.

Dad took my mom and me to half a dozen Dodger games each year, and one of them was the last game of the 1977 season. That one was special because we got to see Dusty Baker hit his 30th home run of the year, the first time four players from the same team (Ron Cey, Steve Garvey and Reggie Smith being the others) all hit 30 or more home runs in a season. And I got to see it, thanks to my dad.

We also saw Fresno State’s football team beat Bowling Green twice in the California Bowl. And we got to see the men’s basketball team dismantle fifth-ranked UNLV 68-43 in perhaps the greatest basketball game ever played at Selland Arena in downtown Fresno.

Mom, as a rule, didn’t enjoy sports too much; she’d go off and do her own thing while Dad and I were watching football in the family room. But when we moved back to Fresno in 1978 and the basketball team became a regional powerhouse, she caught the bug and began rooting for Boyd Grant’s Bulldogs as hard as either one of us.

All three of us were part of the famous "Red Wave" of Fresno State fans who packed Selland Arena (aka Grant's Tomb) to watch the Bulldogs' suffocating defense dismantle one foe after another. 

One year, Dad and I went to the mall and bought Mom a custom red T-shirt with metallic lettering that read “I love Mitch Arnold,” in honor of her favorite player. He kept it in the closet of the house where I grew up long after she passed away.

Partner

Mom and Dad were married for 39 years until she died of a stroke on Jan. 9, 1995, just shy of her 63rd birthday. Stricken by polio as a child, she’d been told she’d never walk again, but not only did she walk – despite being almost fully paralyzed on the right side of her body – she earned a degree from UCLA and then went to work at Douglas Aircraft in Southern California, which is where she met my father.

He asked her to marry him on the spur of the moment when they were smooching in the car, and she said “yes.” They were married Sept. 1, 1956.

They seemed, from the looks of them, to be a bit of a mismatch: my father at 6-8 towering over his 5-foot-2 bride; this beautiful woman on the arm of the professor with the dark-rimmed glasses. When she couldn’t get up off the couch or needed help steading herself as she walked, he was always there with a hand to help her. His lasting impression of Richard Nixon, whom he met before Nixon became president, wasn’t anything political; it was that Nixon had once helped steady my mom when she stumbled as the three of them were walking together. That cemented Nixon in my Dad’s mind as a good guy. Sure, there was Watergate later on, but he had shown compassion toward my mom, and that’s what Dad remembered most.

During all the time my parents were married, I never heard Dad yell at Mom. Oh, he’d raise his voice and had quite a temper, but he never took it out on her. He never remarried and, although he flirted with women from time to time and even had a couple of girlfriends, there was never any doubt that Mom was, and always would be, the love of his life.

My parents tried for years to have a child, without success. Doctors told them they could find nothing wrong, but after six years, they had pretty much resigned themselves to a childless marriage. Then, in 1962, Dad was recruited to run for state Assembly. He’d been teaching at Fresno State for a few years by then, and as a former debating champion at Pomona College, he’d caught the attention of the California Republican Party.

It was an uphill battle, as he was running in a heavily Democratic district, and he was out on the campaign trail when he got the word from Mom that she was expecting. He lost the race by a handful of votes and never ran for office again; but he became a father in the process. He considered it a good tradeoff.

Teacher

I often asked Dad why he hadn’t run for office again, and he told me he preferred to teach.

He loved it so much that he continued to do so at Fresno State as long as he could, after the “traditional” retirement age, teaching into his 70s. In 2004, at the age of 73, he even taught a class for free. That’s right. And they almost didn’t let him.

Of all my father’s many professional accomplishments, it was this the singular act that, to me, said the most about his character.

A budget crisis in California had forced Fresno State to cancel several sections of a political science course. All the remaining classes were full, leaving some students without a class they’d need to graduate. So Dad, who had just retired, offered to teach a section for free.

The university rejected his offer, leading Dad to ask, “Why the heck can’t someone volunteer?” Officials contended it would actually cost the university money, based on a complex funding formula, but Dad wasn’t buying it: “It is difficult to figure out how that works,” he said. “I have a serious problem with that kind of logic.”

A story about the university’s rejection of his offer appeared on the front page of The Fresno Bee. Then, three days later, the university reversed itself and allowed him to teach a class, after all.

Not only did Dad teach the class, he taught everyone in the community at large something about the importance of character – and of putting students before the almighty dollar.  

Father

Dad also taught me a few personal lessons that I’ll never forget. Perhaps foremost among them was the value of an education. When I was struggling as a freshman in high school, failing more than one class, he told me once as he was driving our gold Buick LeSabre that I had two choices: I could start taking school seriously, or I could wind up in a minimum-wage job or doing field labor for the rest of my life. I listened, and the next year, I was earning all A’s and B’s.

He also taught me that victories are infinitely sweeter when they are earned. For a while, when we started to play ping pong, I never beat him. Ever. He wouldn’t let me win just to make me “feel good” because I was a 12-year-old kid; he wanted me to enjoy that feeling of accomplishment he knew I’d get when I finally did beat him.

He knew what he was doing, and he was right.

He was honest in action and word alike. When I wrote a novel I was sure he’d enjoy, he told me it hadn’t really grabbed him. He wasn’t harshly critical, but he didn’t offer false praise to spare my feelings. On the other hand, when I wrote a book on discrimination, he said it should be in every classroom in the country. So when he told my wife, Samaire, that her Mad World novels were some of the most exciting stories he’d read, I knew he was telling the truth. Although the two of them only knew each other for five years, they developed a close bond and heartfelt friendship; Samaire dedicated the third book in her trilogy to him.

Although he spent most of his career in the classroom, Dad did take a couple of detours from his job as a tenured professor at Fresno State. In 1966, he took me and Mom back to Australia, where he spent a year teaching as a visiting professor specializing in American government. His 3-year-old son played with plastic trains, drew crayon pictures and befriended imaginary dragons in an apartment overlooking Botany Bay in Sydney.

Politician

Dad was twice a finalist to become president of a Cal State university – once in Chico and once in Bakersfield – and he served for six years as dean of new program development for the entire university system. He wrote a textbook on California politics that went through 17 editions and served as a political analyst on virtually every Fresno TV station during election season over a period of more than two decades.

He served as chairman of the California Republican Assembly president of the statewide Academic Senate. He liked to talk about how he had invited then-Gov. Ronald Reagan to speak to the latter body, amid criticism that faculty members weren’t interested in hearing from a conservative politician. Dad introduced Reagan to tepid applause but said that, by the end of the session, he had won over the room to such an extent that he received a standing ovation.

He also recalled a visit to Reagan's office in Sacramento, where the governor invited him to try some jelly beans.

Dad was an interesting character, politically speaking. A lifelong Republican, he was nonetheless once branded the “pink professor” for a wholly imagined sympathy for communism. Yet despite his conservatism, he did hold a number of views that could only be described as progressive, and he valued a willingness to compromise well above any rigid allegiance to partisan dogma. In his later years, he often lamented the gridlock that evolved from a growing refusal to see the other side of things. He’d been trained as a debater to argue either side of a given issue, so it was natural that this refusal to listen to other points of view didn’t sit well with him. It’s yet another value he passed along to me.

Adventurer

But Dad’s life was so much more than politics.

He hitchhiked the Australian Outback during his first stay there (enduring an encounter with leeches in the process). He visited Egypt, Italy, New Zealand, Fiji, Canada, England, Scotland, Ireland, Hawaii, Alaska, Arizona, Utah … and I’m sure I’m leaving something out. We flew in a helicopter together on Maui, where we also drive the infamously curvy Road to Hana. We visited Stonehenge, Edinburgh Castle, York Cathedral, Monument Valley, Waimea Canyon, the Oregon coast and Haleakala crater together.

Along the way, he introduced me to his love of photography, shooting seemingly endless rolls of slides with his trusty Minolta. He taught me how to “frame” a photo and explore different angles to find just the right composition. We once arose before the crack of dawn to drive around the San Joaquin Valley, taking black-and-white photos of old barns and dilapidated buildings as the first rays of sunlight crept over the horizon, creating shadowy ghosts that appeared to linger among the beams and rafters.

Supporter

Dad was also a fan of science fiction from way back, from the literary world of Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke to the on-screen entertainment of Star Trek and Star Wars. We watched all the movies in both series together up until the late ’90s, but there was never any doubt which franchise we both preferred. In the ST vs. SW debate, he came down squarely on the side of Trek. He introduced me to The Original Series in the early 1970s, and I’ve seen every episode of every incarnation – big and small screen – since.

He enjoyed folk music (Glenn Yarbrough, who died just a few days after he did at the age of 86; Simon and Garfunkel; Peter, Paul and Mary) and endured my   preference for bands like KISS, Aerosmith and Queen with good grace. He might not have agreed with my tastes, but he respected them: He was the kind of person who picked out Christmas and birthday gifts he thought you’d like, rather than just buying something he would have liked to get himself. He knew I liked dragons, so he picked out a dragon-themed wallet for me; he knew I liked “Star Trek,” so he bought me a “Star Trek”-themed mug. Little things like that from a very big heart.

There were big things, too. He bought a car for me to drive after I got my license. When I was a teenager, we visited Kauai every other year for about a decade. After Mom died, he took me on trips to Maui and England.

He also put me through college at Fresno State, where I graduated summa cum laude (all A’s except for one B and a single C). I was proud of my academic achievement, and I once suggested that I take one of my dad’s classes to see how well I would do. He had a reputation as a good but very challenging teacher, and I wanted to test myself, but Dad pointed out it would be a no-win situation: If I didn’t do well, it would be a discouraging setback, and if I aced the class, people might think he’d showed me some sort of favoritism.

There were all those things he did for me, and then there was just who he was. I would not be who I am today without my father’s love of language, history, science fiction, sports, logic … the list goes on and on.

For years, Dad and his colleagues would gather every week at 4 p.m. at a Fresno watering hole to “solve all the world’s problems” in the space of a couple of hours. Club, as he called it (not “the club,” just “Club”) was primarily a gathering of political science professors: my father’s best friend, Karl Swenson; Freeman Wright, Maurice Van Gerpen and Lyman Heine were among the regulars. They met at Fresno Feed and Fuel for a while, then switched to Sutter Street Bar & Grill at the Ramada for many years, where I was initiated as a sort of adjunct member of the group (not being a professor) for several of those years. Dad would almost always order a martini and an O’Doul’s.

Giver

Dad worked as a professor into his 70s and taught many future leaders, including onetime Assembly Republican Leader Mike Villines, Fresno City Councilman Craig Scharton and Fresno Bee Executive Editor Jim Boren,

His health declined in later years, but his mind remained active even after he sold his home and moved into a long-term care facility. As long as you kept your sense of humor, he’d often say, you'd have a life worth living. His favorite comedians included Red Skelton, Jack Benny, Tim Conway and Carol Burnett. He was himself an inveterate punster, which I’m happy to say has rubbed off on me (although others may not be quite so happy about that!).

A couple of years ago, Dad helped me by providing information and firsthand recollections for my book Fresno Growing Up. His insights, as always, were invaluable. One of the last times he made the trek out of his care facility was a year ago, when he attended my launch party and signing for the book in downtown Fresno. In his final months, he told me repeatedly how proud he was of me and how much he was looking forward to reading my next two books, both due out next year. One is a history of Highway 99 in California, to which he introduced me; the other is a novel called Memortality about a woman who can bring back the dead through the power of her memory.

I wish I could do that with Dad now. In a sense, I’m doing the best I can with this remembrance, which can never come close to doing justice to perhaps the most accomplished man I’ve ever known, not to mention my greatest supporter and lifelong friend.

My father passed away Aug. 6, 2016. We’d seen him a few weeks earlier and held a three-hour conversation with him about politics and life, the past and the future. As always, he was gracious, telling us we should get going as the day stretched into late afternoon because we had a long drive ahead of us and shouldn’t be traveling too much after nightfall. “Watch out for all those nuts on the road,” he’d say. Every time.

I talked to my dad on the phone two days before he lost consciousness. He didn’t seem to be feeling too well, so just before I hung up, I told him something I said too infrequently.

“I love you, Dad.”

He told me he loved me, too. Those were the last and best words we ever exchanged.

Note: The photo that appears above shows my father and my mom, Lollie Provost, in the early 1970s.

How the Clintons helped pave the way for Trump

I never thought I’d look back fondly on the days when a political campaign could be crippled by the public’s reaction to a snowflake that looked like a teardrop.

We used to have so little tolerance for anything that even hinted of scandal in our public servants that even the slightest (perceived) imperfection could disqualify them.

In 1971, Edmund Muskie was the Democratic frontrunner for the presidency until his reaction to a published letter attacking his wife tested his composure. He appeared to wipe away a tear at a news conference, and that was all it took to send him on a downward trajectory in the polls. Muskie himself said he was wiping away a melting snowflake that landed on his face, but it didn’t matter. He was done as a viable candidate. Just like that.

In 1987, Douglas Ginsburg withdrew his name from consideration for the U.S. Supreme Court after it was revealed that he’d used marijuana “on a few occasions.” Around the same time, Gary Hart went from early favorite to also-ran in the Democratic presidential race based on accusations of an extramarital affair. Both he and the woman in question, Donna Rice, denied (and continue to deny) the accusations, but that didn’t matter. Hart was finished.

Compare Hart’s alleged dalliance with the numerous accusations against Bill Clinton, who became president a few years later – including one that involved a White House intern and a blue dress. Clinton survived in what may have been the turning point in the public’s perception of political faux pas.

What changed?

Instead of going on the defensive, Clinton acted as though he was the victim of some affront, declaring forcefully that he “did not have sex with that woman,” while his wife, Hillary Clinton, proclaimed that her husband was the victim of a “vast right-wing conspiracy.” Republican lawmkers’ insistence on pursuing impeachment charges, when it was already clear that the Democrat-majority Senate would never convict Clinton, only added to the impression that they were out to get him.

The great story here for anybody willing to find it and write about it and explain it is this vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president. - Hillary Clinton

Suddenly, the Clintons, not Lewinsky, were the aggrieved parties. Never mind that Clinton’s actions were, at best, highly inappropriate and, at worst, a flagrant abuse of power. But those actions became obscured by the Republicans’ determination to make him pay, come hell or high water, for their own political purposes.

To this day, supporters of the Clintons routinely answer any criticism against them by maintaining it’s all merely part of a Republican strategy to discredit them. Of course, Republicans do want to discredit them – often with accusations so blatantly partisan that they border on the ridiculous to most objective observers.

But the flipside of the coin is this: The public has become numb to serious accusations against the Clintons that don’t stem from Republican sources at all. Is Bernie Sanders, a self-described socialist, really at tool of the Republican party? It’s hard to argue that. Yet his campaign’s charges that the Democratic National Committee sought to tilt the playing field in Clinton’s favor are hard to deny in the face of recently released emails.

What it comes down to is this: The public is so fatigued at wading through the he said/she said morass of accusation, denial, conspiracy theory and high dudgeon that they’ve thrown up their hands and stopped paying attention. They don’t want presidents to do … that … with White House interns, but they don’t want interminable impeachment hearings that distract Congress from addressing the issues facing the nation, either.

The Bengazi hearings proved the Republicans hadn’t learned their lesson from the impeachment debacle. The biggest winner was Hillary Clinton, who wound up looking like the victim of a ridiculously expensive partisan witch hunt.

He’s not a war hero. He (John McCain) was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured. - Donald Trump

Which brings us to Donald Trump, who, if anything, has upped the ante to unprecedented levels. He can insult a former POW (John McCain), claiming he wasn’t a real hero. He can falsely accuse Barack Obama of being a noncitizen. He can make crude and demeaning comments about women, do the same thing about immigrants and falsely claim that thousands of American Muslims cheered the collapse of the World Trade Center.

And nobody cares. They don’t care about his bankruptcies, Trump University or, really, anything else he does.

They don’t care because they’re tired of the blame game that’s been going on between the Clintons and Republicans for decades now. Some even call Trump “refreshing” because he “tells it like it is” and doesn’t lock everything up so tightly no one can tell what’s real and what’s not. They’re so sick of pervasive secrecy on the one hand and the endless investigations on the other that Trump seems like a breath of fresh air ... no matter what he actually says.

The irony is that the Clintons – along with congressional Republicans – paved the way for Trump’s success by making it possible to do or say virtually anything with impunity, because so many people stopped caring.

Just eight years ago, our presidential ballot presented us with the choice between a law professor and a war hero. Today, we have a matchup between a pair of candidates who behave very much like Huey Long and Richard Nixon, the two most unpopular candidates in modern history.

What I wouldn’t give for a wayward snowflake now.

The price of violence — and our only alternative

Guns don’t solve problems. People do. Or we can when we look past our anger, our fear, our prejudice.

Fists don’t solve problems, either. Neither do knives, threats or bullying. This should all seem so very obvious, but we’re losing track of the obvious in a maze of blame and accusation that we’ll never escape if we don’t reverse course soon.

We want easy solutions that aren’t solutions at all. Most often, they only make the problems worse.

Afraid of someone? Shoot him. Easy. Problem eliminated. Right? Except now, all of that person’s friends view you as the problem and probably want to eliminate you. They have guns, too. They can get those easily enough. But more importantly, they have something you gave them: a reason to hate you.

To solve a problem, we must first understand it. But that’s too much work; we want the easy way out. Just exterminate it – or the people we believe caused it – and the repercussions be damned. Understanding is hard because it requires that we educate ourselves, that we try to see things from other people’s perspective even though we may not have experienced their pain, their challenges, their hardships.

They may even tell us, “You can’t understand. You haven’t been what we’ve been through.” But that doesn’t excuse us from trying. At best, we’ll surprise them. At worst, we’ll learn something that will increase our level of knowledge – and more knowledge is always better than less. We won’t be able to solve the problem right away, but we’ll be closer.

If we pull the trigger or dismiss another person’s pain, we’ll be further away. We’ll be promoting the opposite of knowledge, which is ignorance, because those we’ve silenced will never be able to help us understand. Those whose pain we’ve dismissed feel as though they haven’t been heard. And they’ll not only stop trying to help us understand, they’ll stop trying to understand us. And then where will we be? On opposite ends of an armed standoff, trying to blow each other’s brains out rather than using those brains as the best weapons we have against the fear and hurt that divide us.

The alternative

There is another way, if we have the courage and the patience to pursue it.

It’s hard.

When we try to understand, things get complicated, and we don’t like complicated. It’s frustrating dealing with problems you can’t solve right away, with people who don’t trust you, with bureaucracies, playing fields that are anything but level and people who are hell-bent on protecting – and exploiting – their advantages. There’s prejudice and there’s bitterness. But none of that goes away by pulling a trigger or responding with some shallow platitude and going on our merry way.

People who are hurting are hurting for a reason. We can try to shield our tender sensibilities from the hurt by placing a bandage over our own eyes, but that doesn’t make the hurt go away. It only sends a message to those who have been hurt that we don’t care.

The unheard scream, “We matter!” not because they believe others matter less, but because they feel their pain is being ignored or dismissed as unimportant.

Yes, everyone matters. But when you’re hurting and it seems like no one cares, you don’t feel like you do. Then you have two choices. You can surrender to the judgment of others and believe that you really are unimportant. Or you can reject that and say, “I do matter.” And you can take that self-worth and use it as motivation to speak a little louder, try a little harder to be heard. Until someone starts to listen, tries to understand and maybe even helps you change things for the better. Or at least stops hurting you. At least that.

Those who haven’t been heard and those who don’t want to hear have this in common: They lash out. The only way to stop this is to start hearing one another. Hearing leads to understanding, which, in time, can lead to trust.

Building trust is, by its nature, a long and tortuous process that can, tragically, be upended by the frustration and impatience that leads us to pull triggers, call each other names and stop listening. When we do, we put everything right back at square one. Because that’s the reality of this: Not only does the “quick fix” never fix anything, it destroys the entire process of seeking understanding and, ultimately, of building trust.

And it destroys lives along the way.

We have to stop shooting people. But more than that, we must stop thinking we can eliminate problems we don’t understand by invoking brute force or wishing them away. By calling names or building walls. The only way to achieve our goals is by building understanding that leads, ultimately, to trust. That’s hard work; there will be miscommunication and hurt feelings along the way. But obstacles and detours shouldn’t deter us from keeping to the path.

There are no shortcuts.