It’s about 10:30 pm already -- and I need to get to bed soon. This morning, I did my monthly morning with the Alta Bates Tele-Care program, in many ways, my favorite volunteer activity. Tele-Care makes daily, free phone calls to about 300-400 frail and homebound seniors and disabled persons (365 days/year) in Alameda, Contra Costa, and San Francisco Counties. It runs on a shoestring budget depending heavily on dedicated volunteers (some of whom have been involved with Tele-Care for over 25 years!)  I will write more about Tele-Care;  I have been looking for ways to raise funds for the program and to find more volunteers. 

The rest of the day has been spent setting up my home office.  I now have some comfortable seating (a bed that acts as a couch), lot more shelving and draw space.  Let's see whether I can finally organize my office into a comfortable and productive space for myself and people I invite to come talk to me at home.

I find the recent streak of look-how-nutso-Berkeley-peaceniks-are articles quite annoying for their mischaracterizations.  For example, we find in David Rieff's Love-bombing bin Laden  (Salon) the statement:  "That is more or less the Berkeley position today: a plague on bin Laden and a plague on the United States."  There is no Berkeley position per se.  Certainly, the city council has put forth a resolution calling for the end of American bombing in Afghanistan.  And yes, there are folks here who demonstrated in peace rallies that are, in many ways, formulaic and exceedingly predictable.  However, the conversation around September 11 and its aftermath that I have experienced in Berkeley is probably as nuanced and rich and irreducible to slogans as conversations happening elsewhere.  But, of course, writing about this type of conversation does not make for a very interesting Salon article, does it?

(BTW, I was curious to learn more about who David Rieff actually was since I read somewhere that he is the son of Susan Sontag. Through the miracle of google, I found a profile of Mr. Rieff.)