Hello Life, Goodbye Berkeley

Today is my final day in the Berkeley apartment where I have lain my head the past five or so years. Time to move on (again).

For the immediate future, a bit of West Coast travel. Portland for a conference. Weed for a cat-sitting stint. Las Vegas for a poker boyz sojourn. Then the South Oakland hills for a couple of months, the first stop of my new permanent, impermanent state of being undomiciled.

I will be staying with friends and family who for a variety of reasons are looking forward to a tall, bald, middle-aged man in their guest room

Why the lifestyle? Some of you have asked.

I would point out that I have a fairly well-worn reset button as far as my place of residence. I've been doing this for a very long time, only now am I declaring it a lifestyle and, of course, writing a book about it.

For the remainder of this year the fuzzy travel itinerary goes like this: Oakland, Weed, Shakopee, Ann Arbor, potentially Boston and Washington DC, before ending the year in Florida.

Come 2017 . . . watch here for hints of whatever emerges from my personal intentional fog.

We Got Old

Last Tuesday demonstrated just how old my generation has become. We gave into the fears of age and voted for a corporate hack over a true revolutionary. Back in the day with another war raging and dividing the country we supported Eugene McCarthy, Bobby Kennedy and George McGovern. Now the 60+ plus "liberal" vote went to pro-war, pro-death penalty, pro-Wall Street Hillary Clinton.

Another Clinton, nearly another Bush. What happened to us?

I am disappointed in my peers and I am surprised. Have memories faded over the years or have aging fears and 401Ks become more significant than the progressive values we once held together?

I get it that enemies foreign and domestic are on your minds. ISIS, ISIL and all the other threats seem too big and scary. And Hillary has experience with those demons. She bombs them and supports right wing leaders to suppress them.

At home, Trump is looming but poll after poll have shown that Bernie beats Trump by a much wider margin than Hillary. You get no excuse on the home front.

So, to my aging Boomer friends, I say and will say again. I am disappointed in what the years have done to our values and to our fervor. Where did it all go? Why did so many of you, of us, never even look at Bernie Sanders.

I leave you with this memory. When we were protesting Vietnam, do you not remember how it was us (the young) against them (our elders). Families were divided. Parents and children did not speak.

Remember?

U.S. Senator Bernard Sanders is getting 80% of the youth vote.

How can we not remember when we were right where those kids are today.

Do you think we were wrong?