A Wanderer Looks at Sixty – Part 4

Posted on September 6, 2024 by Michael Kane
uncle, tshirt, rev kane

Continuing from part 3, part 2, part 1

Life lessons – Part 4

Well, you hit a certain point in life and you develop a certain perspective on how things work.  So as I hit sixty I have a few thoughts on life.  The fact is, you may or may not agree with my perspective but it’s the one I have, for what it’s worth.  There’s no order, rhyme or reason to the way these are listed.

The first and most important thing to share is how precious life is.  We get one life and no second chance, we can’t reverse time.  To steal a famous saying, we always think we have time, but we often don’t.  So treat life as the fleeting, precious thing that it is, don’t wait!  Plan, do things in a calculated way, but don’t wait.

Travel, see the world, experience different cultures and different perspectives, it will do so much to open your mind and expand your life.

Be nice to people whenever you can, especially those who can’t defend themselves.  But don’t be so nice to people that you let them walk all over you.  Always remember, in every interaction with people you are teaching them how to treat you.

Have fun, act like a kid from time to time, do all of the little things that make you happy, whenever you can.  One of the biggest failings around the idea of adulthood is that we have to act “grown up.”  And certainly there are times that you do, but find time to be a little silly, it’s good for your soul.

Blood is not thicker than water.  I know a lot of people won’t like this but family should not be held to a lesser, but to a higher standard than others.  You don’t owe your parents shit for having you, they made that decision not you.  They didn’t do you a favor raising you and paying for your life.  They decided to take on that responsibility by having you.  You don’t owe your siblings just because they share DNA, your aunts and uncles don’t get to be assholes, racists, and bigots, etc… and get forgiven just because they are related to you.  Your family should be chosen, your family should be those people in your life that give you the love, support and respect that you deserve.

Your job is a job.  In rare situations people are actually doing work they would do for free.  If you’re in that situation I’m so happy for you.  But if not, your job is a job.  It’s not your life, you should do a good job, work hard, be responsible, hopefully do work that you enjoy and feels worthwhile.  But your employer is not doing you a favor, they pay you as a trade for the work that you do and in fact your work is probably generating far more income for them, than they are paying you.  So stand up for yourself, get what you deserve and never let a boss take your dignity.

Learn to love yourself, learn to understand and believe in your abilities and skills. You’re awesome, you’re a completely unique creature in all of the universe, that makes you special as hell, recognize and appreciate that.

Don’t settle too often.  Yes, compromise in life is necessary, but the more you settle the more easy it becomes to settle.  The simple fact is that you deserve better and most people forget that.

Fall in love, take the leap, put your heart on the line.  Even though Tennyson was an asshole, it’s not better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all.  But the idea of a life, where you have never loved does seem like an unfathomable tragedy.

Forgive, but never forget.  So that you are never in the position of trusting that person in the same way ever again.

Get out of your comfort zone.  As soon as you start to feel completely comfortable, find a way to shake things up, take a risk, stretch yourself in some way.  Getting out of your comfort zone will keep you young, feeling alive and help you live a happier life.

Move your damn body.  Sure, go to the gym or do traditional workouts, but you don’t have to, to be a healthy person.  But you have to move, walk, swim, garden, chop wood, jog, ride a horse, chase butterflies around or run around trying to catch leaves falling from trees. 

Read, it shocks me how few people really read.  It’s such a wonderful thing, it expands your vocabulary, keeps your mind active and can take you to places you could never imagine.

Take care of yourself.  Sure, help others, be responsible and caring but remember you have to take care of yourself.  No one else has that responsibility.  And the airplane analogy very much works, you have to put your mask on before you help others.

One of the best pieces of advice I ever read, at the moment of their death, no one ever regrets not working more.

You never truly ever know someone.  Think about it, there are things in your life and thoughts you have that you have never shared with another soul.  This means of course that every person you know has the same in their life.  You’ll never know what those are, you want it simply in musical form, listen to Billy Joel’s Stranger.  So trust needs to be a risk assessment every time and the deeper the risk, the better you’d better know someone.  And because you can never fully know someone, you can never fully trust anyone.

Spend time talking with cool old people and children and really listen to them.  Cool old people will tell you about things and give you insights you’ll never get anywhere else.  Children, especially toddlers, will tell you the craziest shit you can possibly imagine.  For a month while staying with my sister, my toddler niece would regale me every night with her adventures with her friend Woo-Woo at daycare.  There was no Woo-Woo, they didn’t take the boat on the river alone, or drive the babysitter’s car, or feed a pet lion the neighbor had, but the stories were magnificent.  And the attention I gave to her was incredibly valuable to her.  Talking with old people and children is a massive two-way gift.

The red-neck retirement plan (the lottery) is a lot of fun if you have the money.  But never count on luck, count on your work, skill and planning to be successful.

Karma always comes through.  I have never seen anyone escape their Karma.  Unfortunately, Karma works on Karma’s timetable not yours.  So while Karma will collect it’s due, it might not do it at a time that will satisfy your desire to see it happen.

Having a lot of friends, a lot of followers, a lot of admirers is meaningless.  In life, what matters are the people that you can call at 4AM and say I’m in trouble, I need you and they’ll be there.

Learn to ask the three daily questions.  What did I learn today? What beauty did I experience today?  What made me happy today?

Slowdown and breathe!  Take your time, life goes by so fast, don’t wish or push it to go by faster.

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A Wanderer Looks at Sixty – Part 3

Posted on September 5, 2024 by Michael Kane
hunter s thompson, fear and loathing, las vegas

You can’t help getting older, but you don’t have to get old. ~ George Burns

In continuation of Part 1 and Part 2

Part 3 – What the Hell is Next?

So obviously I’m on the move again come the new year, February to be exact.  January will see me getting rid of many of my possessions and packing up the rest to send east.  How exactly I’ll be moving things east I’m not quite sure yet, but I’ll start working out those details in late September.

I guess this is as good a place and time to make it official and public, starting in late March/ early April I plan on another thru-hike attempt on the Appalachian Trail.  That decision has been an interesting journey.  I remember when I was on the trail and meeting folks on their second attempt who had done anywhere from a couple of hundred to a thousand miles on their first attempt.  I didn’t understand why they were starting over from the beginning.  I mean if you have half of the trail done, why not just do the second half?  So I told myself that if I didn’t finish and ever tried again, I sure as hell wouldn’t redo the whole damn trail.

So of course, I’m starting at the beginning.  There’s a really good reason for this, one of the best parts of hiking the Appalachian Trail is the amazing people you meet.  And yes, that’s coming from Mr. I hate people.  The thing is, by the very nature of attempting a thru-hike, the folks you meet on the trail are not normal.  They are people who have put their life on hold for six months to hike the trail.  These are people who have dreams and take chances.  People who love being out in nature and want to explore.  Are all of them amazing people, of course not, but a much higher proportion than you would normally encounter certainly are of that caliber.  As such, that first month or so on the trail is filled with interesting people, and great conversations.  It’s really easy to connect with like-minded people.  Last time on the trail I made at least four life-long friends in a month on the trail. 

Last time, after getting hurt and having to come off of the trail for a month, I also had the experience of being off cycle with the folks I had met.  It was a very different experience, it meant people being suspicious of you because you weren’t known to them.  It also meant at times being the only person in a camp at night and a lot less social interaction.  So this time out, I don’t want to miss out on that initial experience in what hikers call the bubble.  The bubble, is the term the hiking community uses for that early pulse of hikers who start out the same time from Georgia, typically during March and April.  After I get out of Georgia, Tennessee and North Carolina, hell even by time I get to the Smoky Mountains, all bets are off.  I’m not opposed to skipping around and just hitting the twelve hundred miles I’m still missing.  But having started off in the bubble, and being a slow hiker, chances are even as I jump around I’ll be running into familiar faces.

So between heading east, prepping for and hiking the trail I’ll be a full nomad again for six to eight months. That comes with a lot of excitement and a lot of trepidation. Right now, for the in between time, I have no plans or even any idea where I’ll be sleeping.

The plan is, either when I finish the AT, get hurt or just get tired of walking I’ll come off the trail.  Then it’s time to get a job.  I’m looking at getting a job at a four-year college, working with students and having NO supervisory responsibility, or at least no faculty to supervise.  That will determine where I’ll live, but I’m only looking at schools in places where property values are low.  The end goal is property where I can start my farm.  I created Invisible Sun Farms in my head decades ago, it’s time to make it a reality.  Fruit trees, huge gardens, land to forage and hike on and a place where I can pursue all of the things I love, photography, hiking, foraging and natural crafting.  Oh, and I definitely need a pool.

I’ll need to work for at least five years to be qualified for Medicare, thank you shitty US health insurance policies.  At that point, I’ll likely be less present in North America during the winter months and likely spend part of every winter in Oaxaca, Mexico.

I’ve also started a mentoring business.  I’ve been mentoring mid-level higher education professionals.  I’ll be carrying a small client load in retirement as well as running out some products available for people to support them in their career goals.

The other big decision I’ve made for the next chapter of my life is that I am no longer interested in being alone.  I want someone to be with, travel with, someone who I can make plans with, hell someone to give me a hug after a day like today.  I’ve basically been alone all of my adult life and while I’m perfectly capable of continuing that way, I’ve decided to change that.

So that’s the plan, my plans never work exactly the way I want them to.  However what I’ve learned along the way is that I usually end up in the neighborhood of where I expected to be.  So on to the next adventure and hopefully many more happy days my friends. ~ Rev Kane

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A Wanderer Looks at Sixty – Part 2

Posted on September 4, 2024 by Michael Kane

Youth is the gift of nature, but age is a work of art. ~ Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

Part 2 – The Eye of the Nexus

In continuation of A Wanderer Looks at Sixty – Part 1.

Currently in my life, I’m living in a bit of the eye of the storm.  My life is currently centered on leaving and moving.  I’m winding down everything, my job, my time in California and even my current life in most every aspect.  The reason I use the term nexus is that I’m at another great change point in my life.  I’m going from living on the west coast, in California, where I’ve been living for the last 22 years and in total 25 years of my life.  I’m changing careers, for the last twenty years I’ve been the guy in charge, the overworked, stressed out boss of almost everyone I work with.  The responsible one, the one on call 24/7, the guy everybody turns to for the answer.  My next job will be focused on one thing, working with students more directly and no longer having the personnel management responsibility I have had in my career.  Personnel management makes up a large part of a dean’s job, and in my current and utterly dysfunctional college/district, that dysfunction leads to this particular job being almost exclusively personnel management.  It is also by far, the worst and most stressful part of the job, so I’ll be more than happy to let that part of my life go.  Of course that large amount of stress also leads to a pretty nice salary, I will miss that part of my current job but my pension is pretty solid.

My current life is pretty boring.  I don’t have many friends, hell, locally I really don’t have any friends.  There are some people from work I’m connected to but my social life is pretty much non-existent.  I live a pretty solitary life, this will be important as a driver for most of what I’ll talk to in part 3. 

Now a lot of people may argue with this, my life definitely benefits from Instagram reality.  The best way I can describe my life is long periods of boredom punctuated by short, intense adventures.  My day to day existence has always been a bit boring, but I still find ways to take adventures.  Over the years that has included hiking to base camp on Mt. Everest, photographing polar bears in the Arctic, hiking the Appalachian Trail and writing a book about it, swimming with whale sharks, walking across Scotland, biking around Ireland, hell I even almost got killed by ISIS while in Jordan.  Most recently I even got to hug a whale in Baja.

I keep my Instagram and other social media feeds full of good stories and pretty pictures.  So people see the pictures and hear the stories and so they figure my life is one big adventure.  And on social media, this a perception I need to cultivate.  My social media feeds lead to book sales and speaking gigs as well as other paying and non-paying opportunities.  It’s also a way for me to stay connected to all of those people in my life who are at the fringes of true friendship.  People I like, who like me, but aren’t the type of person you call at 4AM when your world has melted down.  But people you want to stay at least somewhat connected to in life.

This is also a reality for life as a wanderer.  I’ve encountered a lot of people in my life and my travels.  But I keep moving and they don’t.  It’s been a real issue in my romantic life when our society puts a premium on roots and living in a single place and I’m always moving.  American society considers wanderers less than, there is something wrong with us that we don’t want to follow the American script.  The fact is, America has always been a place that looks down on people who don’t fit the script.  Don’t believe me, ask any 30 year-old childless woman how many times a day someone asks her about having kids?  I get the same disregard when people find out I’ve never been married.  I get the occasional “confirmed bachelor” suggestion, wink, wink, nod, nod.  But typically people just jump to, fear of commitment.  It all gives me a laugh.  The reality has been that I have insanely high standards that I’m not willing to settle on to be married and check off a box on the script.  I’m also not easy for others, my high level of introversion and high personal space needs make me a tough person to be with, particularly if a person doesn’t have a handle on their own insecurities.  The dichotomy of me being madly in love with someone and still needing time away from them is really hard for people to handle and it’s understandable.  Finally, I have the absolute shitiest timing when it comes to relationships.  I have never considered it a necessity to be married, it was always a hope so, not a need to, in my life.  But lot’s more about this in part 3.

So right now I’ve been on a several week extended birthday celebration.  I got to hang out with some friends at San Francisco’s Pizza, Bagel and Beer Fest.  I then had two of my best friends come into town and we did two days of walking and eating in San Francisco.  After that I spent a few days in Calistoga doing absolutely nothing.  Basically, eating, reading, resting and floating in an Olympic sized hot-spring pool several times a day.  And finally I’ll be heading east soon, a few days with family and a few days on the beach on Cape Cod enjoying the ocean and eating a whole lot of lobster.

After that, everything is focused on cleaning up, organizing, and getting ready to move!

Coming soon, part 3 – What the Hell is Next?

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A Wanderer Looks at Sixty

Posted on September 3, 2024 by Michael Kane

My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was sixty. She’s ninety-seven now, and we don’t know where the hell she is. ~ Ellen Degeneres

A Wanderer Looks at Sixty

The title is obviously stolen from one of my all-time favorite songs, A Pirate Looks at Forty by Jimmy Buffett, while I’m no Parrot Head, the song absolutely touches my soul.  It so perfectly expresses nostalgia for something that actually never happened to you.  For those of us who tend toward being dreamers and wanderers this is not an uncommon piece of our reality.  I am turning sixty, I’m within six months of going into retirement or at least what passes for retirement these days.  I seem to be screaming up on a significant nexus point in my life and it has me very much in a contemplative mood.  I’ve certainly been looking back, dreaming about what has and could have been, while planning and dreaming about what’s possible and next.

Part 1 – Where I came from

I was born in Hudson, NY a dying industrial town that exploded in population in the 50’s and 60’s with the great migration and then suffered the same fate as most rust belt towns.  The factories closed and the jobs dried up and people who used to have little education but good jobs, were not in such a great place.  I grew up under policies of urban development and the explosion of divorce in America.  I went from being one of two kids with a divorced parent in third grade to a whole lot of my friends having divorced parents in high school. 

I didn’t grow up well off, I guess what you would call it is working class.  My single mom worked a lot, so I had a lot of responsibility early, I also spent a lot of time on the street.  In school as a kid I had the perfect cover for a juvenile delinquent, I got straight “A’s”.  This meant anytime someone needed to be blamed for something that happened, things I often did, the blame didn’t go to the white kid with good grades, it got blamed on the white kid with bad grades or the black kid.  I learned about privilege early, I also learned about how to game the system.  One of the greatest skills I learned in a rough neighborhood was how to read people.  You see, you needed to be a wise-ass, it was required.  You had to cut hard with your tongue and at times be able to back it up with your fists.  But in hard places there are damaged people, even as kids.  So you had to know how people would react to being cut.  Would they laugh, respect you or would they punch you in the face.  That made reading people a critical skill and that skill has served me incredibly well in the polite society I found myself in as an adult and in playing the bullshit games I’ve had to play in my career.  It also made me someone who is unwilling to suffer idiots, or give up my self-respect just because someone has a title.

I was also an angry kid.  Life wasn’t great, my family life was nuts, I didn’t live in the best of places.  I was small early on, excessively skinny and then later overweight.  I had crazy curly hair, I was very smart but not skilled socially.  I hadn’t yet learned to curb my verbal impulses, I tended toward brutal honesty and no one taught me about the expectations and niceties of life.  I will give a shout out to the first person who taught me a lot of this, including which fork to use.  She was my friend Peter’s mom, Mrs. Donatelli.  She was an incredibly sweet and kind woman.  She hadn’t come from money but her and her husband had done very well, she floated in upper society and she taught me a lot about the rules, and also about curbing my verbal impulses, all over glasses of Pepsi Light with slices of lemon.

My single goal growing up was to get the hell out of Hudson, NY.  It was a shit town, the people were small, the Peter Gabriel song Big Time, always reminds me of that town and my mindset at that time.  Time does change things and now Hudson, after its main street and a couple of other areas have been gentrified by New York City antique dealers, has become the darling small town destination for New Yorkers.  It gets written up in foo-foo magazines for being soooooo wonderful and you can’t get a hotel room for less than $200 a night and that room is a half-step above a Motel 6.

Being smart got me out, I was accepted to Eisenhower College with an automatic transfer in my junior year to the Rochester Institute of Technology as an Electrical Engineering major.  How that decision came about, well my high school counselor (my former peewee bowling and little league coach), said to me, “Mike, your dad works for the power company, you’re good at math and science, how about electrical engineering.  Sure George,” I responded and my career path was set.  Three weeks before I was to leave for this beautiful liberal arts college on the shores of Lake Ontario I got the one and only telegram of my life, Eisenhower College was closing.  I was going straight to RIT, stuffed into a triple in a dorm that also held a fraternity, Sigma Pi.

This is one of the biggest what if moments of my life.  I was never interested in engineering, had I started out at Eisenhower, I think there’s a real chance I would have found my way to my eventual college major in biology and ended up on a cleaner and accelerated path.  Instead, already angry about life, angry about being sent directly to RIT, stuck in a triple and taking classes that I didn’t like, Sigma Pi presented a great distraction.  Acceptance, friends, women, booze and drugs.

It would take me about 18 months to fully become a drunk, an addict, a whore and kicked out of college.  My parents at the time loved to blame the fraternity, Sigma Pi was just a vehicle to where I was heading.  I made some good friends there, got to know some good people, fell in love for the first time, had some insane and amazing adventures.  I also got exposed to music I would have never known about, it was in that fraternity that I learned about Genesis and Pink Floyd.  Even saw the movie, The Wall at the college theater high on LSD for my first time and the first screaming guitar chords literally made me scream and leap out of my seat causing my brothers to burst out laughing and falling out of their seats.  The National Technical Institute for the Deaf was also housed at RIT and so I got immersed in deaf culture, learned ASL and even dated a couple of deaf women.

Leaving RIT was a massive psychological tragedy for me.  It broke me, made me feel like a complete failure in life.  Returning home to my married for the second time parents was a nightmare of living with my father’s psychological abuse.  But also a massive joy to get to spend massive amounts of time with my toddler brother who was the absolute joy in my life.  Being a full-blown alcoholic and addict, living at home and working two jobs and going to school, my life was a black hole, and the best thing that ever happened to me.  I took that time to make the decision to get clean and sober, to dissect my life and decide who I really wanted to be, to get back to school and get my life on track.  I would transfer from Columbia-Greene Community College, a school that was insanely supportive of my recovery, to SUNY Plattsburgh.

My time at SUNY Plattsburgh was a revelation and glimpse of what my life could be.  I fell into amazing friends, got elected to student government and became a resident assistant.  I flourished, I did well in school, found my way to the correct major for me, a combination of Biology and Secondary Education.  I made life-long good friends.  I had become responsible, successful, was having a blast and really developing the self-confidence that I had learned to fake having at RIT.  SUNY Plattsburgh made me as a responsible adult and a professional.  I owe a large chunk of that to a woman named Cheryl Hogle seeing that potential in me, and she did that for so any people at that college.

I spent two years in Kentucky at Eastern Kentucky University to get my master’s degree.  A happy accident really, I went there because they had an Ecology program, because my granny was a hillbilly from that part of the world and because it didn’t snow in Kentucky, well pretty rarely anyway.  I stumbled into the brightest and best group of graduate students that program had ever had.  I made great friends and learned a lot about field biology and ecology.  Eastern Kentucky University was also loaded with the most beautiful women you’ve ever seen, per capita likely the most beautiful college campus in America.  And seemingly Tennessee shipped all of their pretty women their as well.  I was teaching, learning amazing things, doing awesome research and had a great group of friends, it was a magical time.  Instead of doing what I likely should have done and taken a full ride to Virginia Tech to continue my research, I took a left turn to answer a voice in my head that said I’d be a great lawyer and went to law school.

Law school was a complete disaster, put me massively in debt and after one year I walked away.  I expected to find a bunch of really intellectual folks studying law, instead it was a bunch of dumb ass business majors who were getting a law degree because it was a good degree to have.  But it did bring me to California and Sacramento and gave me a taste of the place I would end up living for half of my life now.

After law school I worked for three years at a consulting firm doing fisheries related work with projects in the South Pacific and Africa.  It was an interesting job, got me to Hawaii, taught me a ton about tuna, sushi and black pearls and gave me a huge taste for international travel.  I left to go to Tennessee to do a PhD in ecology following those lines and it was another disaster.  Eight years, no degree, a lot more debt and living in the bible belt certainly had its drawbacks.  However, I spent time in Brazil in the Amazon, learned to speak Portuguese, got fully back into teaching and met the love of my life, who married another man on my birthday, welcome to the complete lack of straight lines in my life.

I left Tennessee and returned to California, to the Monterey area, a place I’d fallen in love with my first time in California.  I worked at Hartnell College with the best students I ever worked with, had tremendous success and started my career as an administrator.  That career would take me to Sacramento (twice), Placer County, the Mojave Desert and finally to the San Francisco Bay.

And in the blink of an eye it’s twenty years later, I’m closing in on retirement, and in my career I’ve become a very different administrator.  I was always the innovator, the program developer, the guy who brought in money and pushed the institution forward for the benefit of students.  But now, on the back end of this career, I’m the old man on the mountain.  I’ve become the person people come to career advice, for how to solve problems and most importantly to cut through the bullshit and politics to find out what is really going on.

The one thing that has stayed consistent is that I’m the person who won’t just sit there and let shit happen, who always speaks up when I think something is wrong and am always willing to ask the uncomfortable question that is on everyone else’s mind.  So I’m both a complete pain in the ass to my bosses and one of their most valuable assets.  Sometimes they see that, sometimes they don’t.

Coming Soon

Part 2 – The Eye of the Nexus

Part 3 – What the Hell is Next?

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Cupcakes should never cost more than a dollar!

Posted on August 26, 2024 by Michael Kane

You’re only human. You live once and life is wonderful, so eat the damned red velvet cupcake. ~ Emma Stone

A cupcake should never cost more than a dollar!

Ok, I’ll make a concession to capitalism and say fine, let the cupcake maker make their money and charge four dollars, to adults. But it should never cost more than a dollar for a kid. Same with cookies, and yes I even mean big cookies. If that cookie or cupcake is massive and super fancy, ok two dollars for a kid. I mean seriously, what kind of world is it, where a little kid earns a dollar and can’t walk into a bakery or a store and buy a cookie or a cupcake.

Where is this coming from you might ask? Tomorrow is my birthday and I love cupcakes. So I bought the above pictured and highly tasty red velvet cupcake and it was cheap, only four dollars. But while I was buying that cupcake I thought damn, little kids can no longer have that simple dollar experience I loved as a kid. I absolutely loved going into the Jersey Bakery in Hudson, NY and buying a dollar cupcake, buttercream frosting and sprinkles on every one. The same with a slice of pizza across the street at the Pizza Pit, the greatest pizza place ever to exist.

Sure, a lot of it is that I’m old and inflation is a real thing, but when I hear about kids getting $20 dollars from the tooth fairy it’s a bit shocking. So I guess a kid could buy their own $4 cupcake with their tooth fairy money. And even recognizing the reality of inflation, what am I really saying? Simply this, childhood is so important, so fleeting and our adult lives are these anxiety infused mad dashes to inevitable insanity. So we need to protect children and their innocence, imagination and naivete as long as possible. And sure, I long to get a piece of that back myself, kind of the reason I love cupcakes, a couple of minutes of reliving those Jersey Bakery childhood moments.

So my friends, tonight I am asking you all for a very special birthday gift in celebration of my 60th birthday. Do something that makes a kid see magic. Take them to their first movie, give them their first taste of buttercream frosting, take them to a major league ballgame, take them on a great hike to a waterfall. Buy them a really cool toy for absolutely no reason, have a dance party with them or read them a story and do all the voices and add in a bunch of sound effects. Simply make some magic for a kid. The really cool thing, is while it’s my present, it’s a bigger one for them and something that will bring you and me a happy day my friends. ~ Rev Kane

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This close to perfect!

Posted on August 25, 2024 by Michael Kane

To search for perfection is all very well, but to look for Heaven, is to live here in Hell. ~ Sting, “Consider Me Gone.”

This close to perfect!

When I was studying Qigong, sifu would watch my forms and walk up to me, smile and say while holding his finger and thumb a little bit apart, “you’re this close to perfect.” That always stung, I mean I was working really hard, was one of the best students in my class and it just seemed I could never get there. I moved from it feeling like a dig, to thinking it was a tool he was using to motivating me to work harder, to laughing when he said it because I truly didn’t give a shit. Who knows, maybe philosophically that was what he was hoping for all along. What was important to me were the benefits I was gaining from the training both in perspective and physically.

In many aspects in my life, I’m this close to perfect. And honestly I get it, I’m an alien impersonating being a human. And before you jump on the phone to this guy.

I don’t mean I’m from another planet, although my mother has joked my whole life that the aliens left me on the doorstep. I’m not normal, I’ve known that my entire life. This is the kind of self-consideration that can lead to poor self-esteem and loneliness and that was very true of me in my younger years. At some point, after addiction, recovery, clinical levels of depression and a lot of hard work, I ended up coming to the conclusion that, as the Dude said in The Big Lebowski,

It’s such a huge thing to accept and become comfortable with yourself and who you are. That’s why I no longer care how close I am to perfect in other people’s eyes. What matters, is if I am adhering to my values, if I’m giving my best and if I am getting what I want from what I’m doing. I don’t do things like others, so I’m likely never going to be seen as perfect by others and that’s just fine.

The best example is my professional life, I work as a dean. When you say dean people typically go to one of two images. Either some graying, frail older guy in a suit jacket with patches on the elbows, or Dean Wormer in the movie Animal House screaming you’re on double secret probation.

The conventional wisdom in higher education is that as an administrator you need to be some type of constantly professional emotionless robot. If the system shits on you, smile and do the work. If faculty don’t do their job, smile and do the work. If faculty scream at you, call you names, spread rumors, just smile and do the work. And most of my colleagues do just that and eating that much shit leads to these jobs being unbelievably stressful. A long time ago I decided that this particularly ideology just didn’t work for me, so I do not work like an emotionless robot and I demand to be treated like a person.

So this means I demand respect, demand to be treated like another human being and if disrespect is delivered then disrespect is received. It also means that if something doesn’t make sense I question it or disagree, regardless of the title of the person who isn’t making sense. I’ve tried very hard, my whole career to make what I do about one simple thing, the primary purpose that a college exists, to serve the needs of students. In this as well, I’m almost perfect, but over a nearly 40 year career being nearly perfect means I’ve helped a hell of a lot of students. It also means I’ve pissed off a lot of my bosses and a good number of faculty, but they’re not the people I report to nor care about their opinion, I have always reported to my students and the only feedback I need is whether or not I have helped them.

What’s allowed me to adopt this attitude and belief is being comfortable with who I am, what I do and why I do it. That comfort with self was a huge step in me beginning and solidifying my journey to be happier in life. I hope you have or can find that same self-comfort, it will help you have happier days my friends. ~ Rev Kane

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Happiness is Pizzafest

Posted on August 19, 2024 by Michael Kane

Unless you are a pizza, the answer is yes, I can live without you. – Bill Murray

Happiness is Pizzafest

As I’ve mentioned here on the blog I turn 60 very soon and as my birthday is quickly coming upon me I’ve ramped up the celebratory activities. I turned 40 at my first Burning Man Festival, and I had initially thought I’d turn 60 at Burning Man but decided not to go this year. I turned 50 while hiking on the Appalachian Trail and if things work out I’ll be out there again this spring. My 60th birthday will not be as momentous but probably more meaningful. I’ve decided to make it a more mellow affair connected with people I care about and spread out over about a month.

In reverse order, I’ll be on the East Coast for a week to see family and friends and spend a few days at the beach in Cape Cod. On the dates around my birthday I’ll be staying at a very nice hotel for a few days and enjoying the benefits of their spa. And later this week two very good friends are coming into town to do a little walking and eating tour of San Francisco.

But the first event I did close to my birthday was to attend Pizzafest in San Francisco. Technically the event is the San Francisco Beer, Bagel and Pizza Fest. I was alerted to the event by good friends from Las Vegas who were coming in for the event and a visit. So I got to kick off my birthday celebration surrounded by good friends and great pizza on a magnificently sunny day in San Francisco.

The event was great if not a bit disorganized. But there were dozens of pizza places represented, a half-dozen bagel shops and a really nice beer garden.

I really don’t drink, and I’m not filling up on bagels at a pizza fest, so I ate a lot of pizza. I will say, I didn’t have a bad slice. If you’ve read my Pizza Page, you’ll see my reviews for NY slices in San Francisco. I am happy to say that the best slice in San Francisco, Gioia Pizzeria was there. I had a wonderful talk with the owners and they came loaded for bear with some great pies.

Right next to Gioia was my favorite discovery of the day Peace of Pizza from Livermore. Not only was the pizza fantastic but they were just excellent and fun people to chat with. If you’re in the Livermore area hit up there website and get a pie from them.

The festival was a blast and a great way to kick off my birthday celebration, thanks to Leanne and John for providing great company.

Enjoy the gallery below and have a happy day my friends. ~ Rev Kane

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Happy Little Secret Spot: Levi’s Plaza

Posted on August 12, 2024 by Michael Kane

Bob Haas, then chairman of Levi’s said that he wanted it to feel like a well-worn pair of blue jeans. And that’s what we tried to do —it’s off the cuff, never symmetrical, it’s easy-going and relaxed. ~ Architect Bill Valentine

Happy Little Secret Spot: Levi’s Plaza

I love secret little spots, this spot, Levi’s Plaza, doesn’t technically qualify as that, it’s more of an overlooked spot, at least on the weekends. I will absolutely do a full post on this soon, but I guess it’s time to go public that I’m planning on once again attempting to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail again in March/April 2025. If you want to know more about my last attempt you can always search the Appalachian Trail on search function for this blog, or hell, just read the book I wrote about it, Appalachian Trail Happiness, available in paperback or on Kindle via Amazon. Or if you want a signed signed paperback copy from me you can reach out at HappinessKane@aol.com.

As part of my early training to return to the trail I walk in the city of San Francisco nearly every weekend. Why not hike the myriad of local hiking trails you ask? Mostly because I hate them, especially on the weekends. The trails here, while nice, are way too crowded for me to enjoy. You see another hiker or group every couple of minutes, every third hiker has a dog off leash regardless of the regulations and every fifth hiker is graciously sharing with everyone their favorite music with everyone via their shiny new Bluetooth speaker. Throw in dealing with traffic in the Bay Area and I’d rather walk in the city and reward myself with a good pizza or something at one of the city’s many really good food options. The nice thing about San Francisco in terms of urban hiking, is there are no shortage of serious hills to walk up and down as well as miles of interesting neighborhoods to walk through.

Levi’s Plaza

The site was originally known as Frederick Griffing’s wharf. Eventually, the land was built up and the wharf was buried along with Frederick Griffing’s ship. When Levi’s Plaza was under construction, the buried ship was rediscovered. The site is adjacent to the headquarters for Levi Strauss Jeans and is part of the Levi’s Corporate Plaza.

It’s not hard to find, but easily overlooked, it actually sits right on the Embarcadero near the Exploratorium but on the opposite side of the Embarcadero. It’s a beautiful little park and because I really seem to get bored walking the stretch between Fisherman’s Wharf and the Ferry Building and it’s a great break during that walk.

It’s important to have little places of peace and solace, little hideaways that you can slip into from time to time to relax and recharge. This is one little place I have in the city, I hope you all have those places for yourself, they’re important. Here are a few images from the park.

Have a happy day my friends. ~ Rev Kane

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Small Kindnesses Bring Happiness

Posted on August 5, 2024 by Michael Kane

That best portion of a man’s life, his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and love. ~ William Wordsworth

Today I was driving and was craving a milkshake, I behaved myself and didn’t give into the craving. However it brought back a great memory of a simple kindness. There was a restaurant called the Dutch Treat that we would occasionally eat at, it was the one thing that my dad and I ever did together that doesn’t have a bad memory attached to it. We would stop there while out hunting or if we working together. Often I would get a vanilla milkshake with my meal. The waitresses there were always very kind to me and they’d always overload the metal mixing cup for the milkshake. That way, after they poured the milkshake, they could leave the metal cup which meant I got a milkshake and a half. It was a small thing but it always made me really happy.

This memory got me thinking about small acts of kindness and how important they can be. When I was in junior high my family took a trip over the summer and I missed the first couple of days of school. At that time I never bought school lunch, I brought a sandwich every day and would always buy a carton of milk at lunch. So, like the year before, I dropped the dime that first day and the lady gave me my milk. This went on, as expected and as normal for at least a month. Then one day my friend offered to get my milk for me, I gave him a dime and he stood there. Milk is fifteen cents! He was correct and I went to the lunch lady and asked her about it. She had been paying the extra nickel the whole time, when I asked why she said she wasn’t sure I had the other nickel and she didn’t want me to be embarrassed. It was a small amount of money but a huge gesture on her part.

The absolute master of the small kindnesses was my granny. I’m sure that’s true for a lot of us. And I’m not just talking about when I was a little kid. My granny always sent all of her grandchildren a holiday card for every holiday. Hell, I think I even got a Arbor Day card once. She was also absolutely clairvoyant in her small gifts. When I was in grad school, they paid us pitifully, I think I got $800 a month, student loans and part-time gigs filled in the rest. However, there were times when I was flat broke while waiting for a loan disbursement or a pay check. As a retiree on a fixed income, she didn’t have a lot of money but it seemed every time I was in that situation and went to the mailbox there was a card and a ten or twenty dollar bill in the envelope with a note. Get a beer and a burger on your granny. She was amazing and I miss her every day.

The person I’m named for, my Uncle Mikey (actually my grandfather’s cousin), was the first person I remember who understood the significance of the small kindness and gift. As a small child I remember every time he came over, climbing in his lap and giving him a hug and then searching his shirt pocket, because there was always a piece of bubble gum or candy there. My paternal grandfather also had this tradition, every time he’d come off of the train from New York City, he always had a bag of M&M’s for me.

I try and keep this tradition alive, especially for my littlest nieces and nephews. Every time I visit, I always have presents, small Lego sets, sunglasses, hats, etc…always just some small present, a tiny bit of happiness. Today I was reminded of how powerful that idea is to people. My brother messaged me, my niece and nephews wanted him to send me a little gift, a video that thought I would like. It was a Norwegian dude with a big red beard, who had found a weird stick and was sending a nod out to the stick review community (yes, this is a thing on Instagram- Stick Nation with 1.6 Million followers) and then he leapt into a lake screaming about Valhalla. I was thrilled and happy to get this little gift, but I am also a little concerned about what it says about how my niece and nephews view me.

So my friends, find a way to gift a little gift, or a small kindness today. You’ll make someone else happier, but it will also help you have a happier day. ~ Rev Kane

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Happiness is Walking San Francisco

Posted on July 29, 2024 by Michael Kane

San Francisco itself is art… every block is a short story, every hill a novel. Every home a poem, every dweller within immortal. That is the whole truth. ~ William Saroyan

So San Francisco has been on social media in large amounts recently, it’s become a real target of the right leaning media and now with Kamala Harris as the presumptive Democratic Presidential Nominee, it’s even more in their cross-hairs. This has led to a number of questions from friends around the country asking me, how bad is it in San Francisco?

I walk the city of San Francisco almost every weekend. So I’ve decided for this week’s post to talk a little bit about the city I spend so much time in. I love San Francisco, it’s an amazing city both to visit and to live in. Let’s start by talking about the issues that people love to talk about.

Crime: Property crime in the form of car break-ins is an issue, if you live here you know not to leave valuables in plain sight in your car. Not sure it’s worse than any other large city but it’s definitely a thing. In terms of violent crime you are basically living in the safest time in America, or very near so, in your entire life so it’s not anything to be overly concerned about.

BART is dangerous: It’s funny, people in NY incessantly bitch about the subway system, people in SF talk about how amazing it is and how dangerous BART is for them. BART is too expensive, particularly compared to the NY subway. The NY subway also has better city-wide coverage. But BART is fine, it moves you along through a specific part of the city but has a feature of being a regional service serving every from SFO to the East Bay. Yes, there are certain stations that are more dangerous than others, like on any mass transit system. But I have had very few problems on BART in San Francisco beyond some encounters with a couple of mentally ill folks and those were a little nerve-wracking, but nothing ever happened, nor have I ever seen any violence on BART, can’t say the same on the NY subway, especially in 80’s when I was growing up in NY.

Homeless People: Yes, San Francisco has a huge population of unhoused people living on the streets. It always has and for good reason, it’s a completely moderate climate. If you are unhoused, you want to be in a city that has a favorable climate both environmentally and politically. In California, living in places like Redding or Sacramento in the summer where it can be frequently over one-hundred degrees and stays hot at night is not a good place to live on the street. Likewise, in the winter places that get at or below freezing during winter nights is also unfavorable. San Francisco rarely breaks eighty degrees in the summer with nights in the 50’s and 60’s, it rarely goes below freezing in winter. Additionally, it’s a city that politically trends very liberal and so is a city that provides a large level of support to homeless, addicted and people with mental health issues. All of this makes it a place that attracts homeless people.

I know a lot of people get afraid when they see the homeless and their encampments and yes, you will encounter mentally ill people, might see an addict shooting drugs and might even see some human feces. But if you listen to social media that is the picture of the entire city, addicts and homeless shooting up and shitting on the streets everywhere. It’s just not reality. As with any city, there are areas that have more homeless, there are areas that are less safe, San Francisco has these as well, and I walk those areas with regularity. The simple fact is, the good far outweighs the bad in San Francisco. So let’s talk about the good.

First this city has amazing weather. It’s never incredibly cold in the winter, it doesn’t snow here. The spring and summers can go from cool to warm from the 50’s and 60’s up to at the hottest the 80’s. The fall is actually the warmest time of year when you are more likely to find warm days in the 80’s.

The sights are incredible! You have one of the world’s most iconic bridges, the Golden Gate, you have the Bay Bridge, Alcatraz and the bay itself. Coit Tower and the Transamerica Pyramid are in the picture above. The Embarcadero and Fisherman’s Wharf are huge tourists area, Golden Gate Park is 200 acres larger than Central Park in New York City and absolutely incredible. History buffs are in heaven in San Francisco, the city’s history ranging from the gold rush and great quake through the hippy era in the 60’s is broadly on display.

The art and culture is fantastic, Chinatown, Japantown, the Mission District, the Castro, Haight/Ashbury and the Marina all are loaded with deep and fascinating locations and experiences. There are over 80 museums in San Francisco but those are the official sites. San Francisco is also a city full of incredible street art both murals and graffiti. There’s so much tiny hidden history all over the city from the painted ladies houses that showed up in the opening shot of full house, to the house where the Grateful Dead were formed to soooooo much more.

The food scene in San Francisco is out of this world. For me personally, San Francisco competes with both New Orleans and New York as the best food city in America. Whether it’s Michelin level fine dining, to incredibly authentic food from almost any culture, to spectacular burritos in the Mission and all kinds of fusion, pop-ups and mom and pop shops. For me of course, pizza is always an issue and I’ve reviewed a number of spots in San Francisco and have even found NY quality level pizza here, the reviews are on the pizza page.

High strangeness is what makes San Francisco so unique. This is one fabulously weird ass city. One of the reasons that I love walking this city so much is how weird this place can be. It’s not unusual to suddenly see a naked cyclist come riding by, street festivals can go from as tame as a standard block party to a BDSM street festival. Walking around you never quite know what you might stumble into.

So yes, San Francisco exists in the real world, it’s a huge city so it has it’s share of problems, but no more than any other large and old city. I highly recommend it as a place to visit and explore. To illustrate it all, below is a bit of a typical day detailing what I encountered on my walk last weekend.

My route for the day would start with taking BART to Civic Center Plaza so that I could pop over to the library to donate some books. I would walk from the library down to the Ferry Builder, down the Embarcadero to Fisherman’s Wharf up to Fort Mason, up over to Chestnut Street up to Filmore, over to Lombard Street and a stop for pizza. Back down from Lombard to Polk and back over to the library and the Civic Center BART station, almost eight miles in the city.

In the library I encountered an angry patron leaving who decided to slam some doors and make a bit of noise. The area around the library has a lot of homeless and mentally ill folks due to services in that area, so this wasn’t a huge shock.

Heading down Market Street I stopped my one of my hidden little favorite spots, a small holographic sculpture plaza.

Just past the holo plaza I went by a cafe with an amazing South American band playing live and just a half a block later encountered a throng of people outside a hotel waiting for some famous person and hoping for autographs. Couldn’t quite figure out who it might be, they were roped off and had signs and some had trading cards, so who knows. Another half a block down a street musician was playing Elton John’s, this is your song, on the guitar. If you know the song, you know all the individual notes that comprise the song for the piano and he was nailing them on the guitar. I then passed a dude in a mechanized wheelchair going past me cranking music and full-on rapping in Arabic.

I was then eyed by a deadly killer robot.

The city has a large fleet of autonomous taxi cabs run by Waymo. Every time I see them I think of the cab from the movie Total Recall.

Walking down the Embarcadero I hit this marker on the ground, I guess X marks the spot. It denotes the location of some of the buried ships in San Francisco.

It’s a pretty fascinating story about how a lot of sailing ships ended up being buried and became part of the literal foundation of the San Francisco shoreline.

I rolled through Fisherman’s Wharf and past of course one of the most tantalizing parts of the city, The Ghirardelli’s tasty world of chocolate plaza.

I then and headed up Bay and Chestnut streets and saw some amazing street art.

Then over Fillmore to Lombard and over to Amici’s for pizza.

From there, full and very happy I headed the three miles over Polk and down back past the Civic Center and to BART. Just another happy walk in San Francisco.

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