Guv

Sonnet reads the kids Harry Potter and everybody entranced.

Berkeley is THE heart of liberal America - how could it not be? - and I have yet to meet one person who has a kind word about our government and the war (Moe is cautious in his criticism but it is there too). For many of Berkeley's '60s generation and my parents age, a life-time's work invested in public institutions like education or the judicial system or the environment has stalled or been set back. Oh boy. My generation takes these things for granted in large part because we did not have to fight for them - no civil rights movements, no assassinations... the '80s were Boom Times and distractions plenty. Today the apathy seems worse - at least no war going on during my college days - but maybe Barack will change this somehow if elected. Perhaps young people will go back to government instead of investment banking like I did in '89 when 75% of Yale's graduating class applied to Wall Street (I don't know about Brown). Berkeley too has gentrified and the hippies of then are the home owners of now and the properties here valuable: a house bought in the the '70s for less than a hundred grand is worth well over a million now. Telegraph has cleaned up - no drugs, comic book shops, pinball arcades or vinyl records like Rasputins. Despite such change the soul of this place is the UC which ties the community together as ever - for me, it is as simple as rooting for Cal football and our annual dogged cheer applies aptly to government today: "just wait 'til next year!"