Tilden

Pictured - Tilden at the Nimitz trail parking lot facing Briones Regional Park where Katie and I once hunted shell fossils along the Old Briones Road.

My morning starts at 2AM Pacific time - wide awake and nothing to do but think. Stress. By 6AM I am grateful to be jogging and eventually my anxiety subsides. I visit Peet's (again) and today am rewarded with a pure Berkeley moment: amongst the elderly hippies, standing in line next to me, is Robert Reich who is unmissable in a blue button-down shirt, jeans and running sneakers, the old liberal dog. He is also 4'10''.

Reich was Clinton's Secretary of Labor from 1993-97 and today a Professor of Public Policy at UC Berkeley. Otherwise Reich is an East Coaster having grown up in Scranton, PA, and graduating from Dartmouth. He also went to Oxford, Yale Law School, and then became a Professor at Brendeis University where I was hit by a car whilst running a X-country race in college. Seriously - I went over the hood but kept on going. It is not surprising that Reich is now in Berkeley given his political views - it is hard to see him anywhere else in this country, really. Or maybe Cambridge - so perhaps his run for Governor of MA in '02 not unusual.

Reich the first Democratic candidate for a major political office to support same-sex marriage. He also pledged support for abortion rights and strongly condemned capital punishment (eventually Demo incumbent Shannon O'Brien lost to Mitt Romney who won 50% of the vote and gave us all health care, though he denies it vehemently). We need more dudes like Reich to balance Sarah Palin and Glen Beck and the other dip shits who have hi-jacked the Republican party. What a debate that would be: Reich vs. Palin. Brains vs. beauty. I would put my money on the legs.