Going Home

I've had a wonderful time in San Francisco. The place is busy from the wee early hours in the morning 'til late at night. There have been many highlights: meeting Christy Todd Whitman; being "personally trained" by JJ; participating in the Bay to Breakers extravaganza; eating great Indian food with Jud and Renu and walking/cuddling baby Ava when she needed it; learning some economic realities from Kevin at UBS Financial Services; meeting all the fun people at Summation Legal Technologies and U Street; partying with the Young Republicans, including a young female astrophysicist who explained that the expansion of space only seems to be accelerating since the speed of light is actually decreasing; and trying to keep up with John, who knows how to show his dad a great time.

So it's been a fun trip, but now it's time to go home for a rest and back to the relative sanity of Los Angeles. As vibrant as San Francisco is, there is an unsettling air of moral relativism here that makes me uncomfortable. Bare to Breakers, homeless sleeping in the tiny parks, litter and sleaze are the symptoms. It's everywhere.

Take the article in the Chronicle Home and Garden Section today: "Whether you're growing daisies or pushing up daisies, it's all relative." Diana Rathbone is "puzzled by the current effort to portray life and death as opposing cultures, presenting obvious choices." Somehow her tale about life and death in the garden morphs into a diatribe against the quality of truth. "Shut up!" she shouts at the TV screen when President Bush is addressing the nation about fighting evil. She rails against Pope Benedict's proclamation against the "dictatorship of relativism." She yearns for the Clintons, the "undisputed king and queen of relativism.

I need to go home now.