She has an additional question to ask herself with security questions about your mother’s middle name or father’s middle name. Which mother? Or, for some of her friends, which father?

It’s not a problem when there are plenty of choices for security questions. The Minecraft registration form has some questions my daughter can’t answer and more than enough questions she can answer. However, I see a lot of security questions, for account registration, that don’t have enough options. In those cases I end up just making up an answer and then recording it somewhere so I don’t forget it. That defeats the security.

14th St between Guerrero and Dolores

I wondered about them, I asked about them on social media, nobody knew, nobody answered, and finally a web search gave me an answer. From a MissionLocal article January 2012 (Love is in the Air!)

It started in April of last year, when Rossi was crafting magnetic hearts and giving them away to people she felt a connection to. But the idea for the dangling hearts grew out of her curiosity about sneakers hanging from telephone wires. Originally from Spain, she often wondered about the story behind the American phenomenon.

“They intrigued me so much,” she says of the sneakers. “I asked a lot of people about it, and I seemed to get a lot of mixed responses.”

The urban myths she heard were about drugs, gangs, violence or claiming streets. She realized that the act of throwing sneakers over wires was an urban language. But it was a language that had come from a low, dark place.

“I thought, can I use their language and talk other things?” she says. “Can you talk humor, or can you talk love?”

It was then that she decided to use hearts as a universal sign of love, to speak a language that’s about love.

Then these red hearts, hanging on wires above 19th St between Mission and Valencia, caught my eye when I was walking to work.

19th St between Mission and Valencia

And last week I  spotted these red hearts, hanging on wires on Sanchez St near 18th St (between 18th and 17th).

Sanchez St between 18th and 17th

I love this city.

More:
Aqui love! from the artist Ana Rivero Rossi
When Hearts on Power Lines Help Us Feel The Love from Environmental Graffiti

I’m reading less and less on paper. I subscribe to print magazines that I also read in either Play Magazines on my GalaxyS3 or Nexus7 or in the NewsStand on my iPadMini. I subscribe to a magazine on my Android phone/tablet (via Play Magazines) that I don’t receive in print at all.

I’m reading the print version less and finding it less valuable. I’m considering stopping subscription to the print magazine and just paying for access on phone and tablet.

For years we had the New York Times and SF Chronicle newspapers delivered on weekends. We cancelled our paper NYTimes delivery a year or two ago and switched to paying for “All Digital Access.” Now the NYTimes is delivered on our tablets and smartphones. We still receive the Chronicle in paper on weekends and our daughter reads the comics.

Now my ideal morning has me sitting in a comfy chair with a tablet and a cup of coffee. On a tablet (I currently use either a Nexus7 or an iPadMini), I read 2 newspapers, 3 magazines, and a multitude of news articles in apps and in a feedreader. I skim through all of that in 20 minutes, saving or forwarding articles I want to come back and read in detail. I can share, save, email, copy/paste content and consume more in one sitting from multiple sources. I don’t miss having so much paper in the house to recycle.

The only thing I miss about paper newspapers/magazines is a physical experience of the breadth of a fully open publication on a table or in my hands. It’s a nostalgic emotion. I wonder if my elementary school daughter will feel the same nostalgia when she starts reading more on devices/online than in print. She currently receives a few magazines in the mail each month and reads more books in paper format than on a device.

For me, because I didn’t grow up with handheld devices, my youth feels farther away as I give up consuming content on paper.

Earlier the dental hygienist had said the same thing (“Hi Mom”) and I thought she was talking to someone else.

“Hi, my name is Leanne, not mom, nice to meet you,” I said as I reached out my hand and smiled at the dentist.

Why do adults-who-work-with-children lean over to talk to a child and politely and invitingly ask their name but then often look at the child’s parent and not bother with a standard greeting such as, “Hi I am __name__, what’s your name? Nice to meet you.”

This conversation (with “Hi Mom” or similar directed at me) has happened to me, in the time that I’ve been a parent, with all sorts of people who work with children. People at my daughter’s school, at camps she goes to, and some of the medical professionals she sees (not all of them – thankfully her primary doctor is always professional and polite and simply fantastic) often just call me “Mom.” It irks me.

I don’t need anyone to remember my name. I’m most definitely not anyone’s mom beyond my daughter.

Consider other social circumstances:

1. At a work or other organizational meeting, if people don’t know each other’s names, then people don’t look at each other and say, “Hi, guy in blue shirt, what do you think of this?” The people in a meeting usually introduce themselves first.
2. In a social setting, someone doesn’t look at me and say, “Hi, woman with glasses, how are you doing?”
3. When I go to see a doctor or dentist, they usually reference a chart to find my name if they don’t remember me. Or they say, “Hi I’m _name_” and I reply with “Hi, I’m Leanne.” Humanizing.
4. When I go to a doctor or dentist appointment with another adult, to support my friend or my wife, then the doctor or dentist usually introduces her/himself and asks my name.
5. And so on.

So why is it that I’m no longer a person with a name when I’m with my daughter? My daughter pointed out to me, “she was just saying that you are A Mom.” Well, sure, but we don’t call other people by the name of their assumed/actual relationship with the person in the chair. The dentist, for example, wouldn’t say, “Hi Wife” to me if it was my spouse in the chair.

I wish people who work with kids would always humanize the parent they see, not just label the parent as merely mom or dad or another label. It’s the small courtesies that stick in memory. We do more than just pay the bills and make sure our kids show up. We’re parents and we’re human and we have names and we appreciate what all of these people do for our kids.

He mentions that he has a friend, from Ethiopia, who moved to San Jose, while he, the driver, lives in Virginia. His friend told him, “don’t visit me here.” He asked why. The friend responded, “there are a lot of gays here.” He asked me, “Is San Francisco full of gays?”

I wondered where this conversation was wandering. It felt slightly awkward. “There aren’t any gay people in Ethiopia,” he continued, “people hurt and kill gay people. I don’t understand the gays. I have a friend, she says she’s lesbian, and she asks me all the time if I’m okay with gay.” I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. With the conversation threads of immigrating from a country where being gay means invisible or harmed (how can you harm and kill gays if nobody is gay?), the friend who doesn’t like the gays in San Jose, …. It seemed the odds weren’t good for this conversation and I felt trapped in the back of the car.

I’ve had this experience before. A driver chitchats, I respond and add to the conversation, eventually I’m asked if I have children, if I’m married. Yes, yes, I reply. And, inevitably, “what does your husband do?” And so, “oh, no husband,” I cheerily say, “I have a wife.” The majority of the time, “oh, my mistake” is the response and the conversation continues, but a few times there is silence for the rest of the ride, the driver, the married dyke out of the closet in the back seat.

This driver continued, “I don’t understand gay, I don’t know any gays, besides my friend who says she’s lesbian, my friend in San Jose  is afraid of the gays, sometimes I think I see gay people here in U.S., in my country being gay is not okay.”

“If she says she’s a lesbian, then isn’t she a lesbian, not just saying she is?” I challenge him. He considers, “I don’t care who anyone is, it’s just that I grew up where there are no gays, gays are hurt and killed.”

Then we were at the airport. My heart was beating faster. “Thank you for the ride,” I say, “you’ve met one more gay. I’m married to a woman.” His head whipped around, “you? Really? No way.” Keeping a quiver out of my voice, not having felt so slightly afraid of coming out to someone in a long time, “yes, I’m a lesbian like your friend, and I have a wife who I’ve been with for 15yrs and we have a daughter.”

I smile and step out of the car and walk into the airport. I wasn’t in danger but I was so shaky nervous.

The more people know “the gays,” the less likely they are to vote, or advocate, against civil and human rights for LGBT people. One towncar driver at a time. Speak up.

and skiied off into the forest.

The downhill was faster than I expected. This was an “easy” trail? It wasn’t going to be easy for the 8yrolds to ski/climb back up.

The best parts of any skiing, downhill or xcountry, for me, are the moments of silence with trees and snow and air.

After lunch we started to climb back up the hill, my wife with our daughter encouraging her to keep going, and I went ahead. I carried both worry, that our daughter was too tired to ski the rest of the way, and joy, skiing climbing alone in a snowy forest as the sun set over treetops. A fine treasure.

I stopped at a bench at a trail intersection and they met me there — my wife towing our daughter using a ski pole as the tow line. And so we continued back.

We consulted the map again. 8 miles. No wonder it was exhausting for the kids! Happy new year!

The man who had been standing next to me did nothing, watched me as I got up and caught his eye, turned away from me. The elderly ladies sitting in seats exclaimed, “are you OK? would you like my seat? Do you need help?” I felt bruised and scraped and slightly embarrassed as I picked myself up, grabbed my bag of computer and gadgets and regained my position on the streetcar. I was fine. My knees ached, I could feel the scraped skin, my hands burning from the landing, and I’m just waiting for 3 more stops to pass so I can get off this bully of a streetcar.

I grew up in the country, in a beautiful house on beautiful land with beautiful views, at the top of a hill with a 1/4 mile long gravel driveway from the local highway up to our house. Early every morning, as a child, I would walk/run down the gravel driveway, with its curves, past the clump of trees where my imagination claimed tigers and lions lived, to meet the school bus down on the local country highway. I rode the bus for an hour to get to school. Sometimes I would fall while running down the last hill, rocks scraping into my knees, above my knee socks, below my skirt or dress hem. I’d get onto the school bus with bleeding knees, some kids would point and laugh at me, and the ever gracious kind bus driver, Nancy, would hand me bandaids.

Today on MUNI, with my knees aching and feeling scraped after falling and flying down the aisle, the memory of the gravel driveway and running for the school bus felt fresh, along with the memory of the kids making fun of me. There were a lot of bullies in my elementary and jr high and high school years. In elementary school, for a year or two I had pointy toed saddle shoes and kicked-in-the-shins anyone who made fun of me or my friends.  Was I a bully too? Or was I protecting myself? What’s really the difference? Aren’t some bullies acting out of reactionary self-loathing?

Recently I felt bullied on Twitter, reminded of the gravel grinding into the skin of my knees, when a friend wrote vitriol and curses to me and my wife. She’s since removed the curses that she directed at me and my wife.

My wife, Moya Watson, has written and spoken a lot about, and helped create media about, bullying online and offline and within one’s self. The way she listens and hears the stories and experiences of others, expresses, her own and other’s experiences, and weaves all of the humanity, is a luminescent beauty.

Last night I went to a splendiforous dinner party at Firehouse 8 where the entreaty at the start of dinner, once everyone was seated, was to leave our inner critics at the door. That can be a self-bully, that inner critic. The one who can say  you’re not ____ enough.

So this city, these friends, that friend, those people, the damn streetcar, your own self, we it all have bullies within and around us. The trick for me right now, the attention, is to be aware and conscious of the full drama of humanity, also, within and around, with love and kindness on the flip side of anger bullying criticism.

(photo taken with iPhone4s – ha!)

My tech gadget dreams are coming true? So far I like the Galaxy S3 more than I thought I would. I desperately miss the physical hardware keyboard of the Droid3, but the zippy speed and nicer screen and the ice cream sandwich features make up for that loss.

My ultimate device would be a mashup of the Newton (I loved handwriting recognition), the hardware keyboard on the Skytel two way pager (“barbie computer”) I used in the late 1990′s (best keyboard I ever used), and the buttons and touchscreen of Android OS withOUT any default apps/settings (let me pick, please! I don’t want Color! I don’t want NFL Football! I don’t want Kies air! I don’t want WiFi always on!). At least Android Ice Cream Sandwich makes it easy to disable and hide apps I don’t want. iOS would be so much nicer if it had that feature.

I don’t like rooting my phones just to have more control. I like to know what the general/average/default consumer experience is. The OS should give me control.

I still have my Newton, in a drawer, in all it’s 4MB storage glory. Miss you, babe, you were what I accidentally left behind at a girl’s house once, and then I married her. Tech romance.

Every year Moya, my wife, makes a music mix for friends. This year she named her mix “2011 Saints.”

I’ve mixed up 5 different cocktails and bottled them to give to friends, along with Moya’s music mix. Together they are the perfect party starter – a music mix, and a pre-mixed cocktail. For most of these, just add ice and stir or shake and strain!

(left to right) Douglas Fir Gimlet, Winter Tale, Honey Saffron Liqueur, Pear Rosemary Cocktail, Autumn Leaves (and, yes, that's a magazine tree in the background!)

Here are the recipes:

Douglas Fir Gimlet (from New York Times)
Winter Tale (my concoction)
Honey Saffron Liqueur (from Eat Boutique)
Pear Rosemary Cocktail (from Bi-Rite Market)

Autumn Leaves (I don’t remember where I found this)
Combine in a mixing glass, stir, strain, garnish with orange peel:
3/4 oz Apple Brandy (I used Laird’s)
3/4 oz Rye (I used Bulleit)
3/4 oz Carpano Antica (or sub other sweet veromuth)
1/2 oz Yellow Chartreuse
1 dash Cinnamon Tincture (fill a small jar with cinnamon sticks, add vodka to cover, let soak 2 weeks, strain and refrigerate)