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It works for the crow, why not you? CAW is a simple philosophy I discovered in my 30’s while in the muck of despair and depression. I was living in a small town where I had gone to start a career as a newspaper reporter and rebuild myself as a person. It took years to find my bedrock — the kind that builders of skyscrapers drill down to as an anchor for their lofty ambition. If I was to achieve mine I needed tools for my rebuild. I found three. I call them CAW: Can, Am, Will. CAW works by taking advantage of your …

The van lurched and went silent just after rumbling across the metal surface of a bridge connecting my island home to the big city, and I cursed myself. “Fool! Why didn’t you fix the fuel gauge?” Out of gas, the van coasted to a stop in the middle of a one-lane road lined with homeless camps, impoverished people holding signs begging for help, and migrant laborers seeking work. Drivers honked and cursed me even more than I did. A knot of migrant dudes in blue jeans watched from the sidewalk as I ran to the van’s rear and began pushing. …

Thanksgiving is only five days away, but it seems like forever; a too-distant, too-short timeout from grievances that have fractured our families, our communities, our nation – and can’t be vaccinated away but might be eased with doses of gratitude. Over the next few days, I’ll be looking for some by questing backwards through family gatherings that saved me from past ills. Come with me – maybe we’ll both find something. Today: A Family Brawl “Two-and-a-half hours – the driving time to my parents’ house – wasn’t time enough to soothe how I felt about a friend’s suicidal plunge into alcoholism. …

(Part Two) As The Boat With No Name sailed away from us forever in July 2018, Laura and I watched, sadly, and then with alarm as it entered the “slot” of fierce wind sucked off the ocean into San Francisco Bay through a constricted throat called The Gate. “Surely Jon remembers our warning not to put up all the sails until he is past it,” Laura said. We had told him how we made that mistake when we were young and nearly lost the boat. It was one of many warnings and advisories we overloaded the new owner with in …

(Part One) It doesn’t matter why The Boat With No Name foundered in the surf off Newport Beach three weeks ago and broke in two like my heart when I saw the video. It matters that it lived, conjuring dreams within every sailor who stepped aboard her with a far horizon in their eyes – like the tears in my wife’s eyes and mine as we saw our beloved friend dying in the waves. https://youtu.be/oSWuhIr3Nvk?t=1591 We were the second owners of this wondrous being – who was as alive to us as the two children we conceived within her during …