Sex, politics, city ambling and solid food

Hi, Wilson
Junior and I have had had a great time bonding this week. Since acquiring the Little Unbreakable from the One World Play Project on Monday, I've been introducing them to the World. Well, OK, the world of San Francisco.

A giant rainbow flag flies at the boundary of the Castro neighborhood in San Francisco.

One part of that world has its own flag, Pictured above. Remember a year ago on Valentine's day? I explained women to you and it was then that we accepted the fact that One World Futbols are pre-gendered and are assigned the third-person singular non-specific pronoun, "they." (I'm still forgetting to use that pronoun from time to time -- old customs are hard to shake.)

Well, San Francisco has a neighborhood--the Castro--where the residents have been clarifying their gender orientation for decades. And they recognize it's not an either-or. It's a spectrum, so they represent it with that geat big humongous rainbow flag.

A historic theater building is another identifier for the Castro neighborhood.

There are people who have trouble understanding that spectrum, and one of those individuals caused a lot of hurt last week. The Castro neighborhood showed solidarity for the victims of his rampage by gathering a big pile of flowers on a street corner in the heart of The Castro.

Junior visited a growing pile of flowers that expressed solidarity with the shooting victims.

This was the beginning of Junior's initiation: the harm humans can cause for each other and the role OneWorld Futbols can play in bringing people together.

San Francisco's Grace Cathedral welcomes those seeking immunity from intolerance.

The next day, when my other traveling companion, Valerie, and I were walking on Nob Hill, we visited Grace Cathedral, which is the epitome of tolerance and understanding, as indicated in the photo above. Valerie held Junior up so they could read about the commitment of this Episcopal church to offer immunity to all who enter: Immunity from the "ravages of religion," ... "inquisitions, crusades and witch hunts," and "religious military zealots, abortion clinic bombings and TV evangelists attempting to take power..."

At their young age, that was a lot to throw at Junior out of the blue, but they handled it well.

Twin Peaks

Sheltered from brisk winds on this staircase, Junior ascended one  of the Twin Peaks.

There was more to see in The City. Valerie wanted to see Twin Peaks, a couple of hills that overlook San Francisco. It's a steep climb, made shorter with the help of a bus that took us most of the way to the top. Junior was able to make it up the final steps, despite some really brisk winds, where they could take in the view of the city, in the photo, below.

View from Twin Peaks; the faint diagonal line in the center of the photo is Market Street, pointing toward San Francisco's Financial District.

The Haight

Junior and me in a botique that capitalized on the sixties' rejection of  materialism.

Afterward we hiked down to Haight Ashbury, another item on Valerie's bucket list. She shot this photo above showing me educating Junior about the Sixties.

Junior also got introduced to the concept of luxury during a brief visit to Laurel Court in Nob Hill's opulent Fairmont Hotel.

Junior ogles the Fairmount's grand staircase.

Not the world's crookedest street?

Despite the hills--or maybe because of them--San Francisco is a great walking city, and we walked for several miles on Thursday, including in our ramblings a visit to the crookedest street in the world -- part of Lombard street where  a really steep slope is made navigable by a series of Lombard's sharp switchbacks.

Actually, a Cable Car conductor observed, Lombard isn't the world's crookedest street. The top honor, he disclosed, goes to Wall Street.

Junior observed the passing of the cars on one of the many curves on Lombard Street.

Then we hit one of the great landmarks of the world -- we set off for The Bridge.

From the bridge we could view a smirk of pelicans passing below.

After walking the Golden Gate, Junior rested.

What to do after walking The Bridge? We introduced Junior to their first solid food -- at Ghirardelli Square. At more than $12, this was probably the most expensive banana split I've ever purchased. I couldn't believe they ate the whole thing.

Junior spies the Ghirardelli banana split...

...and leaves the plate pristine.

Well, Wilson, you obviously don't have to worry about me getting lonely. I've got Blue at the condo, and Junior to hike with. I've got summer plans for the Little Indestructible, but that's for a later dispatch.

Love,
Robert
(And Junior)

Introducing Jr.

Wilson,
You and I have been on four continents in the past couple years and visited several nations, and I have yet to see as tiny a One World Futbol as I saw in Berkely, CA,  Monday afternoon when I visited the One World Play Project headquarters. The dang thing almost fit in my shoe! Well, OK I exaggerate. But I still want to tell you about the visit.

My new, diminutive One World Futbol on the shoe seen 'round the world.

First of all, there's the news about the tiny One World Futbol that I photographed on my shoe in the bathroom of the San Francisco time share after I got back. Not everyone who wants to play with unbreakable One World Futbols is man-size. Some aren't even kid-size. This ball is for the tyke-size.

It  would have been great to have a few of those last November when I was in the Baobob refugee center in Rome, where some of the families were waiting for an evening meal with babes in arms. It's an appropriate addition to the One World Play Project's love arsenal.

The staff at One World Play Project gave it to us when I visited Monday -- "us" including you (on Mount Adams), and Blue (at my condo). And now we got Jr.--that's my name for the little one. (And "junior" is a gender-free term! Jr. will be tagging along with me in San Francisco.

Tim Jahnigen

Now the next thing I want to show you is the proof of how truly resilient these balls are. That's me in the photo below with Lisa Tarver, Co-founder and Chief Giving officer for the One World Play Project. Lisa is also the spouse-in-chief of Tim Jahnigen,Co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer (and visionary for this marvelous ball), pictured at the right. Note that Lisa is holding a ball with a big chunk missing and a whole lot of little bite holes in it. That's what can happen when a big dog with bitey teeth gets to play with one of these things for a year.

Look closely, because this is one of those rare photos that show just how tough a One World Futbol can be. The well chewed ball still has as much bounce as ever.

But get this -- the darned thing is firm, holds its shape, and bounces as if it isn't missing a big chunk of its exterior. If you didn't see the hole, you'd never know. These things take a trouncin' and keep on bouncin'. (I think I said that a long time ago in an earlier blog.) The balls aren't necessarily recommended for pets, but people buy them for their dogs anyway. These things last--and work!--in places where people are kicking rag balls around.

You know, Wilson, there are 195 nations in the world--196, if you count Taiwan as a separate nation. (That's where the balls are made, by the way, with many shipped in 40-foot containers that can hold 5,000 balls.) One World Play Project has sent One World Futbols to 175 of those nations. So far, they have shipped 1.6 million balls. At 30 users per ball, that's 48 million people who didn't have to purchase their entertainment. They were given the ball by strangers like us and our donors.

And something else is happening. Organizations that are distributing the balls are involving girl players in traditional societies where girls were less likely to engage in sports. In my imagination,  I think that, just by creating this endurable ball, One World Play Project is making it possible to shift the paradigm and is contributing to the incremental redefinition of what it means to be female.

Look, Wilson, I know that, you being genderless and all, this "girl" issue  may not mean much to you, but trust me, over time this could be important.

Me, Jr., and the One World Play Project staff.

There's one other person I want to give special mention to in today's dispatch: Marketing Associate Emily Hopcian, the individual who has been instrumental in what we have been able to accomplish. She's my go-to guru. She's standing on my left in the photo above, with me holding Jr,, who has been kissed with a whole bunch of staff autographs. To my right is Lisa Tarver. Other One World Play Project staffers in the photo are, left to right from the top: Luc Schwab, designer; Cameron Maguire, giving and R&D coordinator; Rebecca Perez, director of corporate partnerships; Jenn Hwang, VP marketing and communications; Taylor Veit, marketing assistant, and Neill Duffy, chief catalyst.

From their second floor suite in a Berkeley office building they are sending the power of play all over the world. It's an office sort of like every other office, but the fact that it looks so ordinary makes it so much more extraordinary -- and inspirational.

We can do things, Wilson. We can make a difference.
Love,
Robert

Shades of summer past!

Wilson,
This time the letter isn't for you. It's for my friend, Val, who will join me this Monday evening, after I return from meeting the folks at One World Play Project. And she's going to be eating her heart out. Not because she'll miss a chance to meet the people who make those wonderful unbreakable soccer balls. It's about missing the Haight-Ashbury summer fair!

Throngs of mostly normal-looking people jammed Haight Street for several blocks to catch a glimpse of a period that came and went before they were born.. Hippies indeed left their mark!

Val is an old friend and I invited her to come along on my San Francisco trip. She has never been here, and Haight Ashbury was on her bucket list. On Sunday I took a bus ride to check out Golden Gate Park and how well my muni pass for a week of public transportation worked. But the bus got diverted by a blocked street. It was the fair! This was pure seredipity, and it took me back to my misspent youth and the 1960s.

Like, far out, man, it was like good-tripping into a time warp, warp, warp, warp.

Wilson, you weren't around then, of course, but you know about love, because you represent agape, brotherly love. And 1967, the year I headed off to the military,  was the Summer of Love  (including the brotherly type) in San Francisco. It was a Utopian celebration that started in Golden Gate Park and became the impetus  behind the runaway hit, Hair. Geeze. That was 49 years ago, but you wouldn't know it by some of the characters who showed their faces and colors on Sunday.

 I shot a bunch of photos of the activities and people and the neighborhood, and I'd like to share them with you. I'll add captions to some, but many speak for themselves. Here they are:

Flower man was selling psychedelic umbrellas and beads.

Was it the mushrooms? The old gaffer-- (oops, probably my age) --said he sees right past the peace symbols on those shades. That symbol, by the way, is created by combining two military semaphore symbols, "N" and "D", bound by a circle. The initials stand for "nuclear disarmament."

Psychedelic type faces can be hard to read, but who cares, man? It's groovy.

Signs representing two different eras content for the tourist's dollar.

Tie-dyed T-shirts

Oh, wow, man. Out of sight! Way cool. It's like, wow, like the biggest owl eye you ever saw, man. It's far out! No, wait, it's psychedelic!  No, it's so far out it's in! Gotta have it on my mantle. That Michelob bottle needs to go--all the candle wax I dripped on it one night 50 years ago to make it look really old has faded and chipped off...

One block away, opulent, manicured Victorian-styled homes, accented with gingerbread motifs and spiced with hints of psychedelia, reinterpret the ostentation of  the counter culture that was absorbed  and co-opted, yet continues to inform the mainstream.

Around the corner from the street fair, a young entrepreneur sought donations for his lemonade stand to benefit a civil rights academy named for Harvey Milk, the first openly gay person in California to be elected to public office. He could only accept donations because of the city ordinance, his mother explained.

Dead Heads should know this Ashbury Street address--it's where THEY hung out.

And Jerry Garcia's spirit still plays on here--on the sidewalk at the bottom of the steps.

Love, 

Robert

In search of the Creators

Dear Wilson,
Since we haven't yet recovered you from the top of Mount Adams (if you're still there) I've decided its time to return to your roots. I've gone off in search of your creators.

The search begins in a city I have known more than 65 years -- but not well. My oldest recollection of San Francisco seems to be right at the location in the photo above. I think it was there, when I was a toddler, that I looked up at two big men who were doing what has been done here countless times--push the cable car to rotate the platform on which it sits. This realigns the tracks from the arrival position to the position that aligns it for the climb back up Powell Street Hill.

One of the men was my father, and the other was Uncle Chico, the Portuguese gentleman who married my mother's youngest sister.

I remember that the day was bright -- is was probably summer. And the street seemed empty. In those days there weren't the crowds, and the passengers were expected  help push the car around.

Now there's a long line to climb aboard at $7 a pop. The cars are so crowded from the get-go that by the time they reach Bush street, where the Time Share is, there's no more room to climb aboard. After three fully-loaded cars went by, I had to walk down the hill a couple blocks on Saturday to catch a car that still had room for me so I could go to Fisherman's Wharf. I used my Muni pass--    $40 for 7 days of city transportation. Ride the cable car as much as I like.

San Francisco brings up memories of Carl Sandburg's poem, "Chicago." It is vibrant and alive. Perhaps it is a little wicked, which is what the sign above would have suggested until society became more accommodating.

The City has oppulence and sometimes useless wealth, such as the kitch statues of three monkeys on a bench (below), too many of which have been made, and whose novelty hasn't been sufficient enough for buyers to snap them all up. Many appear to remain storefront art, secured from theft by the fact of their garish tastelessness.

Contrasted against this was another form of street art -- the exposed buttocks of a man struggling up the steps Sunday morning from the Bay Area Rapit Transit (BART) station at Powell and Market. He was too close to the ragged edge to be ashamed of the fact that his pants were falling down and he wore no underwear. As I trudged up Powell following my photo shoot another homeless man preceeded me, talking to himself and then singing aloud, "I'm Popey the sailor man, I eat from the garbage can..." Hanging from his belt was a piece of aluminum tubing, which looked like something he might have use for when night comes.

San Francisco is a city of mysteries. For example, while it awaits the awakening of the San Andreas fault, it accommodates buildings that anticipate the moment when portions of them will tumble fourteen stories onto pedestrians below:

And modern as it is, apartment dwellers apparently haven'g been blessed by the convenience of cable:

In a few days, Wilson, I will take the BART to Berkeley, where I will meet Emily Hopcian, one of the One World Play Project staffers who has supported our efforts to raise One World Futbols and distribute them. I appreciate the support Emily and the staff have extended to our campaign.I thought maybe you would like to know more about your roots. News about that in a few days.

In the meantime, however, there's a city to explore -- again. There's Boudine sourdough bread to buy, and the Embarcadero to walk. There's Coit Tower to climb and a World War II Submarine and a "liberty ship" to walk through. And The Bridge. Naturally,  The Bridge.

Don't forget the sights and smells of Chinatown, which starts two blocks from the Time Share. We will be doing something special in Chinatown, and that's all I'm going to say for now.

On Friday, when I got in, I walked through Chinatown to  a restaurant listed as one of the top three on a Trip Advisor notice: Molinari, which actually is an Italian Deli. I only recently learned about the high ranking for my favorite Deli, which is a short distance from the time share. The time share, by the way is converted from an old Hotel bracketed by the Powell Street Cable Car and the Chinatown gate (below).

At Molinari I purchased a sandwich, some aged Jack Cheese and 12-month Spanish  Manchego along with a quarter poud of kalamata olives. While I waited, the two meat cutters chatted in rich Italian while the lady next to me asked for the rosmaria turkey.  I've gonna try that--in a couple of days.

Love,
Robert

The Search for Wilson, May 2016

The view of Mount Adams as Team Wilson Search and Retrieval set out.

Wilson's perch atop Adams

Wilson,
At this writing, only you, me and members of the Washington Branch of Team Wilson know the outcome of the search and retrieval mission last week. The donors obviously want to know whether that intrepid Mission Impossible team dug you out and retrieved you from the post you were tethered to atop Mount Adams last July.

And I'm going to tell them all about it.

But first, they deserve an update on the delivery of the One World Futbols they so generously sponsored last year.

Here's the tally:

• April 2015: 10 to Ecuador, distributed to an orphanage, Quechua natives and the black descendants of slaves owned by the Jesuits, living in a community called Valle Chota, which provided some of the players on Ecuador's national soccer team.
• May 2015: 4 to Tijuana, distributed to families (and an associated school) who were benefiting from homes built by volunteers from the Seattle area.
• July 2015: 2 to a remote village in China, transported from Hong Kong by an educator and food scientist with an interest in preserving seed stock from traditional farms. The villagers had never seen soccer balls.
• August 2015: 3 to Burma to support the school  at Mae Sot, a community of refugees living in a garbage dump
• October 2015: 3 taken by my Ecuador traveling companion, Melanie Wood, to a school in India that teachers girls a skill which can help them avoid working as prostitutes.
• November 2015: 23 to the Baobob refugee center in Rome. The center served African refugees.
• January 2016: 10 to Liberi Nantes, Rome,  which sponsors soccer for refugees.
• March 2016: 20 to Seattle Academy of Arts and Sciences. Students there go to Zambia each summer. Last year, because of Wilson's participation in the Madison Street Marathon, the students raised money for One World Futbols to take to Zambia. This year Team Wilson donated the balls.

So, Wilson, you have been an inspiration, contributing to raising enough funds (and matching donations) that 179 fubols were sponsored last year. There are about 100 left to share.

August distribution scheduled

Three Seattle Community Colleges sponsor Global Impact, a program to send teams of doctors, health industry students and lay people into the third world to hold health clinics and improve health conditions for communities. In 2011, I went with such a team to Peru, where we conducted clinics, promoted water filters and built cook stoves with chimneys, replacing the open hearths that filled homes with smoke, damaging the health of the mothers who endured the smoke in order to feed their families.  In August, I will be going to Vietnam on such an excursion --  and distributing 10 One World Futbols to remote villages. Keep in mind that each ball is calculated to serve up to 30 individuals.

Vietnam Atonement:

I don't mind saying that there's something personal about taking the futbols to Vietnam. A generation ago, I was a young Air Force second lieutenant fresh out of college with money in my pocket for the first time and a spiffy sports car to drive around, Planes from McChord AFB in Tacoma made regular flights to deliver high priority cargoes to the war zone. I was a flyboy too-- as an information officer, I flew a typewriter for almost four years in Tacoma. I never heard a shot fired. For me, the war was almost a fantasy, barely a distraction from the good life.

Imagine how different it would be for those people if "Rolling thunder" had referred to the sound One World Futbols made when they hit the rice paddies, instead of what was really falling out of those bombays as the B-52s carpet bombed Vienam. Imagine what a difference it would have made if the persistent gift we left behind had been ecology-friendly One World Futbols instead of  land mines and Agent Orange. 

Every ball I take there will have our slogan on it: "Someone Loved a Stranger." It's small atonement for what we did, but as I explained to the Seattle Academy students, every donation of a One World Futbol is an act of love. That may sound corney, but it's true nonetheless. It is an act of altruism--brotherly love, something the ancient Greeks called "agape." And for us, it is almost effortless. It's just a better form of entertainment.

Well, that's what we've done so far and what we're going to do this summer. Having said that, readers want to know what happened with the search and retrieve mission.

Here's the report from Ana Elz, a member of the expedition that set out March 14 to find you:

Weather frustrates the search

We were unsuccessful in our quest to find Wilson.  From the start, I had my doubts about making this trip given the weather reports, but group mindset was ...optimistic and we headed to Adams.  

Team Wilson Selfie: In foreground, Jeremy, the trip organizer. Anna Elz is on the right with the baseball cap. The others, from the left, are Sean, Cory, Sara and Steve.

Friday we hiked in a couple thousand feet.  I thought we found a great spot to camp, protected, but our leader insisted we push on until 8 pm, which placed us in the wind tunnel for our first night of camp.  Good stiff breeze that night.  We struck camp and headed to the lunch counter in high winds.  Mind you we saw folks coming down saying it was bad up there.  At this point, while we were battling 30-40 knot gusts I suggested we follow suit and head out.  But again the group mindset was "well it could change let's get to the lunch counter".  (The "Lunch Counter" is a plateau with basaltic outcroppings. It lies at the base of the slope that leads to the summit.--ed)

Six inches to one foot of snow was predicted...  We made it to the lunch counter around noon, did the camp thing: melted snow, ate, took a nap.  During that afternoon we experience large hail and the first large flakes of snow.  Then by 6 pm we crawled out and reassessed.  

The mountain was socked in but the wind was calm.  They decided we'd assess at midnight.  Still optimistic that we could make it to Piker's Peak at least.  I crawled back in to bed.  At least I had my comfortable Double Z pad and a zero degree bag--very toasty.  The wind picked up around 11 pm and then dropped.  At midnight we awoke to snow--approximately 6 inches and more falling fast. The decision was then made to pack up and hike out rather than wait for daylight and more snow.   In the end that was right choice.  

Big snowflakes: The white streaks are snowflakes blowing past the camera.

We struck camp loaded up, and headed down in the dark with headlamps,  a GPS track,  and a couple wands to guide us out.  We had left our snowshoes stashed below the first camp when it was decided that we did not need them.  Now we could have seriously used them.  A tough slog out, but we made it and that's the most important part.  (And we found our snowshoes).   The group attitude was good although overly optimistic. 

   
Even though we were excited to go look for Wilson, I still would have made the choice to go down earlier.   I hope there is a future attempt in better weather and little more melted snow.  For now the Little Indestructible may still be there but we won't know for sure until we go look again.  

Robert maybe you do need to make that trek again... 

Anna  

Well, maybe I'll try again. It would be so wonderful to find you, Wilson -- there would be so much to share.

Love,

Robert

Dr. Livingstone, I presume?

Wilson! Wilson! Are you there?
It's more than 24 hours since a group of intrepid mountaineers were scheduled to ascend the state's largest mountain, to see whether you were still clinging to a building that is probably buried under several feet of snow.
And I've heard nothing.
Nothing!
Are you still lashed to that building at the top of that pile of rock, ice and brimstone that forms Mount Adams? Did the sun's ultra-violet radiation weaken your tether and the howling winds at the mountain top carry you off? Or are you still there, waiting to be retrieved?
There has not likely been such a memorable search since Stanley went into darkest Africa looking for Livingstone. Who cares? Some people do.
Inquiring minds want to know.
Well, OK, they would have wanted to know if I had told them ahead of time that a search and retrieval operation was under way. But I got distracted, and all of a sudden I realized March 14 was a couple days ago. That was the day that Anna Elz had pledged her commitment to see whether The Unbreakable was still clinging to a post atop Mount Adams, where they was left last summer. (Click here for the story.)
Here's one of the last photos I have of you since you made it to the top last July as the crowning achievement of your mission to raise One World Futbols for children all over the world:

As you faded into the midsts of legend, I hung on to the dream of looking for you again. I joined the Mountaineers. 2016 was going to be the year I settled my grudge match with Mount Adams by making it to the top after two aborted attempts.
But something happened in the interim.
I got older.
On my first training hike with the Mountaineers, I realized these people are animals. The first hike was a night hike with headlamps, and the pace was steady and upward. My quadriceps began to growl. I stopped to rub them. The Mountaineers trudged on. The night got darker. The quadriceps began to groan and quiver. I fell behind. The Mountaineers trudged on. After a couple of hours of trying to hush my quads the hike was over, I slid into my tiny sports car, and it was then that there appeared in both legs a pair of charley horses worthy of the Smithsonian.
It became clear I was not going to be able to find you on a Mountaineer hike this year.
But a month ago I attended a Mountaineers snow scramble field trip in which we trained to slide down hill upside down on our backs without dying and stomp through snow for a couple miles until I sweated a couple liters of water into my garments, too many of which I was wearing that day.
I made it through primarily with the help of instructor Anna Elz. Her photo from the Mountaineer's Web site is immediately below.

Instructor Anna Elz

Anna  just happened to mention that she was going to climb Mount Adams in May.
I just happened to mention that I had a friend up there.
Naturally, she was curious.
Inquiring minds want to know,
The rest is history.
Shortly afterward I receive the following message:

We are planning to climb on May 14. The road should be mostly open to the south route but we may have to tack on a few extra miles round trip to get to the trail head. With the snow pack, it is very possible that Wilson will be buried since we are going so early. The other thing I wondered, is that much will depend on what was used to secure him to the mountain. Even if he is indestrcutible, the material used to attach him may be worn or he could have blown off. It is still a great mission and we will report any sightings. I've told my team and they are excited too!

Missing Futbol Notice

As soon as I received that e-mail I made sure they would be able to identify you if they found you, so I forwarded this photo at the right from last year's Missing One World Futbol announcement.

Here's the latest e-mail I received from Anna:

Update..we are furiously packing and much discussion of the turn in the weather. Sounds like we are going for it but the summit bid may be in a snowstorm.. So we'll see what this adventure brings...maybe Wilson..maybe not but it will be fun,cold,and WET!!!We turn back if it is unsafe but if we do make it to the top it will require a hell of a lot of shoveling. 

Will send update

Cheers ,

Team Wilson

Well, there you have it, Wilson. Now we can only sit and wait ... and hope.

Love,

Robert