25 Random Things

25 Random Things has been going around Facebook for a while now. My friend Larissa Schwartz tagged me on her list, so I put my fingers to the keyboard and posted one, too. Thanks again, Larissa! It was a fun exercise.

So...here is a whole lot more information about me than you will ever want or need to know:

1. I am named after my dad, but he had a different middle name (Melvin), so I wasn't a junior. My middle name is Patrick, after my Irish grandfather Patrick Gallagher. When I was young, I wanted my middle name to be Melvin, too. No offense to anyone named Melvin, but I'm glad now that didn't happen.

2. When I was young, my dad's family referred to us at Big Donny and Little Donny. Only my cousin Phyllis, my mom and a couple of my college fraternity brothers still call me Donny. I would rather be called Brilliant, but that will never happen.

3. I still hold the record for the 100-yard dash at my high school because after I graduated, they changed from yards to meters.

4. I really like watching and listening to great guitar players. I've played for more than 30 years, but never seem to get any better. My dream is for someone like Eric Clapton to invite me up on stage to sit in for a few songs. "And monkeys will fly out of my..." -- Madonna

5. I appreciate small, everyday things and stop to smell and photograph flowers whenever I see them. Earlier this week, I was late getting back to work after lunch because I spent time observing water droplets on leaves and the way the light sparkled differently as the angle of the sun changed. I once vowed never to be without a camera. So much for that; no photos to come.

6. As a kid, I would spend entire evenings watching spiders spin their webs until they finished and got into position in the center. I didn't wait around for the gory, insect murder portion of the program. I don't like horror movies, either, and usually leave the room when it gets violent.

7. I can go for long stretches of time without interacting with a whole lot of people in person. I like people a lot, but don't need to be around them all the time to be happy. That said, I was Speaker of the Year for Toastmasters Club 2593 a few years back. See number 8, below.

8. I'm generally not very competitive and don't mind when other people finish ahead of me, especially when they're people I like. Knowing how good they feel makes me feel good, too. But then, so does winning, so I guess I'm competitive after all. I can't decide. Being a Gemini is a curse, I guess. Or, maybe it's a blessing. I can't decide. You decide.

9. I took up bicycle road racing after I ruptured my achilles tendon playing racquetball when I was 35 years old. Last year, I was ranked number one in California and number four in the U.S. for criterium racing in my age group. For that, you get listed on a web page hardly anyone ever visits. "Everyone get 15 pageviews of fame." -- Andy Warhol

10. The hair that used to grow on my head has moved to my nose and my ears and other places where it should not be found (aging isn't pretty). In college, I was a bearded, long-haired, bell-bottomed hippy and used to go to San Diego to buy Mexican pot by the kilo. I spent a night in jail for growing and possessing it in 1973 and that scared the freaking bejesus out of me, so I put down the ganja. (Never, ever go to jail.) I still admire the Rastafari movement, the late Bob Marley and his sons who carry on with his message. One love.

11. I can't decide if I want to live in a beach house on an island in the Pacific, a cabin in the woods or an apartment in Manhattan. I wish I could alternate between the three.

12. I went to Brooks Institute of Photography to study photojournalism, but they closed the department when I got there and I ended up getting my degree in photographic illustration. It took a long time to realize it, but I don't enjoy trying to illustrate someone else's ideas. I much prefer to shoot what I see that inspires me.

13. I get tired and frustrated contemplating whether or not there is a god and what it means. I just wish people would destroy all the world's weapons, forget past animosities, love and care for each other and live in peace, marvel at the wonders of the universe and the gift of our planet and be thankful for the blessing of life. Hey, you might as well ask, right?

14. My great-grandfather Hiram Davidson was one of the first settlers of the San Bernardino valley and the city has a Davidson School and Davidson Street named after him. My dad told me Hiram owned a lot of land in the north end of town but lost it in a poker game. Whenever I go back to San Bernardino and tell people I'm the great-grandson of one of the city's pioneers, they say stuff like, "Spare a buck so a guy can get a meal? How about a cigarette?"

15. I grew up with parents who smoked and had my first cigarette when I was about 11 or 12 years old. When the attendant was busy checking someone's oil (like they used to do), my friend and I bought a pack from a machine at a gas station for a quarter. It made us dizzy, so we tossed them out. I took it up for real when I was in college because my girlfriend smoked. She left me, but I was hooked and I smoked until New Year's eve 1976. Cigarettes killed my dad, and my mom is tethered to an oxygen machine at home because of them. Philip Morris: kiss my ass.

16. On the first day of my first job out of college, I rode shotgun in a gasoline tank truck, filling tanks of wind machines in orange groves so they could prevent the fruit from freezing overnight. The tanks of the machines were on top of the towers and it was pitch dark, so we didn't know they were full until the gasoline was raining down on us. We did it until 2 a.m., and around midnight, the grizzled old guy who was driving the truck broke out a bottle of Wild Turkey whiskey that we shared as we drove through the groves. We did this 16 hours a day for two straight weeks. I was really glad I got a college education so I could make the world safe for orange juice.

17. Growing up, I lived in 14 different houses in 15 years and went to almost every school in San Bernardino. I wish my mom would have learned to redecorate instead.

18. If I accomplish nothing else of import in my lifetime, it won't matter because I raised two of the finest sons any man could ever ask for.

19. I have no tattoos -- yet. I have the design worked out, just need the courage (and/or copious amounts of alcohol).

20. I got my first job at age 15 and have been working almost continuously ever since. My average time on a job during those four decades is around four years. See number 17 to understand what Freud might say about it.

21. I generally prefer the company of women to men. When I worked at Mount St. Mary's College, one of the nuns called me Sister Don and I was honored. I have a lot of great male friends, mind you, and like to hang out with them, but (sorry, guys) I much prefer to be around women. They think better. I also find them a lot more pleasant to look at. (Yeah, I'm in big trouble now.)

22. I tend to work with intense spurts of high energy, sharp focus and productivity, followed by periods of aimless contemplation and lack of organization. Some might call this laziness, but I prefer to think of it as spiritual research and emotional strategic planning. One of my favorite van Gogh paintings is "Noon: Rest from Work (after Millet)." I'll take the tall haystack, please. With the shade on the side.

23. I'm an emotion junkie. I tear up every time Hallmark Hall of Fame shows that commercial where the former student returns to visit her retiring college professor as he's packing up his office. You know he knows where his glasses are; he just wants her to say the words in the card. And when he tells her he remembers her after all those years...

24. In the summer after my sophomore year in college, my dad gave me just enough money to fly one-way to Hawaii and said, "Get a job and earn your ticket home. I'm not paying for it." I lived in a one-room apartment in the Waikiki area of Oahu with two fraternity brothers, worked the 6-11 p.m. shift as a janitor for the Honolulu newspaper, spent the days eating the one big meal a day I could afford at Smorgy (the smorgasbord at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel), then lounged on the beach or hitchhiked around the island. During that summer, I saw Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix in concert right before they died. It took all summer, but I saved enough money to fly home. It was one of the best times of my life, but I was bummed that I never got laid.

25. I used to be a procrastinator, but can't seem to find the time for it any more. I would really like to try it again later.

Bonus Random Thing #26: If you don't make your own list and tag 25 friends, the world will not come to an end. It will, however, be a much less interesting place.

[With thanks to Larissa for inspiring me to do this and apologies for borrowing (albeit much less effectively) from her style and content.]

We're Number One!

My Citrus Valley Velo cycling teammate Dick Gentili asked me recently if I was aware that last year I was ranked number one in the State of California for criterium racing in my age category by USA Cycling, the governing body of amateur road racing. I checked, and sure enough, I was. Below is a screen capture I did of the page, which has since been replaced (click on the image to view it full size). I still can't believe it!
There are a lot of guys who raced more races and finished consistently higher than me in 2008, but the difference was winning the "big" races. This was the first year I ever won more than one race in a season, but the three I won were all NRC (National Race Calendar) events: The Redlands Bicycle Classic, Garrett Lemire Grand Prix in Ojai and the Brentwood Grand Prix (photo of finish above). Because of their rating by USA Cycling, they were weighted more heavily in the scoring.
It turns out I also ended up tied for fourth in the nation, too (click on the image to view it full size):
This is very cool, too, but it's important to note I didn't do it alone. In most cases, I was able to win because of the hard work of my teammates in the field of riders behind me. Cycling is a team sport, and without them I would not have been as successful as I was. Thanks, guys. We're number one!
Photo by Leonard Monge

Let There Be Darkness!

I don't like using an alarm to wake up. It's so utterly unnatural, but it's a requirement of this work-a-day world we live in. I'm not much of an early riser, but today the alarm had its advantages.

Because I had to be in north San Diego County at 8 a.m. for a training ride with my cycling team, I set my alarm for 5:15 (yes, totally ungodly). When I went outside to get the Sunday Los Angeles Times, it was still dark enough to see the waning crescent moon surrounded by stars. Well, not exactly surrounded. I was able to make out the major constellations (Centaurus, Ursa Major) and the brightest stars (Vega was amazing).

Like every morning, I had to use my arms and hands to cover the many street lights and porch lights to be able to see the few stars that are bright enough to pierce the "light pollution." Because we've been experiencing Santa Ana winds of late, there was no discernible air pollution. The only thing that keeps those of us who live in the San Bernardino Valley from seeing a sky full of stars is the prevalence of bright lights.

There is a great story in National Geographic (image above) about the end of night. We know, for example, that we sleep a lot less since the electric light bulb was invented (averaging less than seven hours now, compared to ten before). In our quest to extend our days, we've sacrificed a lot, including our ability to see and appreciate the cosmos.

The bright lights of our buildings and our roadways also wreak havoc on many of our planets' species, notably birds and animals that rely on the light of the sun or the moon to direct their behavior. Nesting sea turtles, which seek dark beaches for nesting, are finding fewer and fewer places that meet this need. Their hatchlings, which use the light of the horizon to navigate toward the ocean, are frequently misguided -- to their inevitable death -- by lights on shore.

In the late 1990s, I had the incredible opportunity to spend a day with artist James Turrell at his ranch outside of Flagstaff, Ariz. A graduate of my employer at the time (Claremont Graduate University), I was there to interview him about the MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant he was awarded for his wonderful art that uses light and space to challenge our perception. Raised a Quaker, Terrell is a soft-spoken genius whose ideas are boundless. He talked that day about how the light we're seeing from the most remote stars began its journey to us before our galaxy was born. "Ancient light," he called it.

His most famous project, which I was unable to visit because the roads were impassible due to snow, is Roden Crater. He purchased the crater, and the adjacent land, after an extensive search for the perfect place to create this monumental art work/astronomical observatory. One of the most important criteria for his choice was that the location be as free as possible from light pollution.

Turrell has been instrumental in Flagstaff being a leader in requiring that city lights be focused downward in order to minimize their impact on the night sky. In 2001, it was designated the first International Dark Sky City. Bravo! We should all push for such a designation in our own cities.

In 1987, while driving back to the hotel in Kona after visiting Volcano National Park on the big Island of Hawai'i, I looked out the window of the rental car and saw something that made me pull over immediately. It was about 1 a.m. and the moonless sky was virtually solid with stars. It was so dense that I could barely make out the Milky Way. I turned off the car and its headlights, let my eyes adjust to the darkness, and stood in awe. If we saw that kind of celestial display every night of our lives, we might have a different perspective on our place on the planet, and in the universe.

I haven't seen a sky like that since, but plan to. My goal is to visit the 14,000-ft.-high Mauna Kea observatories on Hawai'i and see an even more magnificent display. When I get there, I'll give thanks for the darkness that allows us to see ancient light.

Four Billion Trees

That's how many trees are cut down each year to create paper products. One of those products, of course, is the daily newspaper, which about 1.7 billion people read every day. Each person in the United States uses 749 pounds of paper every year (adding up to 187 billion pounds per year for the entire population, by far the largest per capita consumption rate of paper for any country in the world).*

I'm not a scientist or a mathematician and don't have any evidence to offer to support this statement, but our planet cannot sustain this. I could spend the time to gather data using Google, but it's pretty obvious: not only are there not enough trees to continue this, but the cost to our global environment and to local ecosystems in creating, shipping and disposing of these wood and paper products is overwhelmingly deleterious.

We're seeing only the beginning of the sea change that the Internet and personal computing will bring to the way we send and receive information in the future. The decline in newspaper readership is an example of this. The new generation of e-books and e-reading devices is the flip side.

The photo above shows the new Plastic Logic Reader, which is designed to display full 8 1/2 x 11 digital pages: Word documents, newspapers, magazines, PDFs, books -- you name it. It's about the same size and weight as a pad of paper and is designed to compete with the Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader Digital Book, among others. My point here is not to evaluate one or more of these products, but to envision the potential for them.

Here is what I would like to see and hope some of the visionaries at companies like Apple will make it happen: A device like the Plastic Logic Reader that is a digital reader, Internet-capable tablet-style personal computer, cell phone, video and still camera, video conferencing, television, and music storage and playback device.

Basically, it should be a cross between my MacBook, iPod and Blackberry; and all in the form of a device the size of a pad of paper. It should use a Bluetooth stereo headset for voice phone calls and listening to music, and include voice recognition software so we can dictate messages and documents while doing things like driving, cooking or making love (not! -- just checking to see if you were following along here). I'd spend what I do now on the print edition to have the Los Angeles Times delivered wirelessly to the device every morning. There's your business model.

The technology is available today -- all we need is to give it the proper footprint. So, what are we waiting for? Let's get to work and save four billion trees!


* Source: Ecology.com

National Day of Service

Michelle Obama's video (above) calls for all Americans to join her and her family on Martin Luther King Day, Monday, Jan. 19, for a National Day of Service. What a perfect way to kick off President Barack Obama's term as president, which begins with his inauguration the next day.

For many Americans, it will be just another day in a three-day holiday weekend. I hope instead we can all find a way on Jan. 19 to honor Dr. King and the Obamas by using our individual talents and abilities to do something for others. Visit usaservice.org to find out how you can help. I found ten different activities I can volunteer for that day -- all within 20 miles of my home.

It doesn't have to be spending the entire day at a skid row soup kitchen. It can be as simple as being on alert that day for people around you who have needs. Open a door for someone who has their hands full, back off and let the car in the next lane move into yours, offer a word of praise for someone who provides exceptional service. An act of kindness is an act of service, too. And it shouldn't stop at midnight on Jan. 19.

As President Obama takes office next week, it will be easy to accept the cynicism that is rampant in Washington and the nation. The challenges he will face are not just his, but everyone's. If we let a spirit of service to one another guide us, there is no limit to what we can accomplish. I repeat the wonderful message from Dr. King that Michelle Obama shared in the e-mail she sent today:

"If you want to be important -- wonderful. If you want to be recognized -- wonderful. If you want to be great -- wonderful. But, recognize that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. That's a new definition of greatness."

Star Stuff

Carl Sagan told us
We're made from star stuff
Tiny bits of matter
Bundles of energy

Born eons ago
In the center of a star
Somewhere, everywhere
Here, then, now

Tiny, temporary galaxies
We spin through life
Accelerating, non-stop
Toward the infinite

There is space within us
Much more than substance
And space between us
Flying apart, we scatter

Until we feel the pull
Gravity takes hold
And we dance, as partners,
With stellar neighbors

Our star stuff commingles
And we remember: time is now,
There is no space between us
And again, as always, we are one

Copyright Don Davidson 2009

Photo: The Antennae Galaxies. Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration. Acknowledgment: B. Whitmore (Space Telescope Science Institute)