Family Photo: Votes I asked Lawrence if he wanted to come with me to vote:Lawrence: What's vote?Me: It's when we tell the government what we want.Lawrence: hmm...can I bring my Christmas list? We settled for bringing a toy car and headed off to the polling place. Perhaps an indicator of San Luis Obispo's high cost of living, our polling place is a private airplane terminal. Everyone is amazingly friendly though, and after I voted the ACI Jet people let Lawrence visit the hangar and walk...
12 days ago • 5 min read
Family Photo: Attention Calvin and Lawrence staged a glowstick performance for their stuffies, sponsored by the Summit 2025 vendors. I don't know what vendor sponsored the glowsticks—their name either fell off or was never attached to the styrofoam. Tradeshows are competitions for attention. The competition is frequently embodied in SWAG: stuff vendors give out for free to entice people walking the tradeshow floor to talk to them. The stuff can vary from branded pens, to stuffed animals, to...
19 days ago • 5 min read
Family Photo: Kingdoms Welcome screen at Orlando International Airport (MCO) Orlando is a land of many kingdoms: Disney's Magic Kingdom, Disney's Animal Kingdom, and the lesser-known (not Disney-affiliated) Chocolate Kingdom. The kings of these respective kingdoms aren't explicitly named, though we can speculate—Mickey? Simba? Ozempic?—Real power here probably lies somewhere between the consumer and the stockholder. With that in mind, this week the full membership of Cooptimize (all seven of...
26 days ago • 5 min read
Family Photo: Coaches Calvin's developing his handwriting. Now we're routinely greeted by little notes around the house as he explores this form of expression, practicing encoding his thoughts onto paper: "I luv dad"; "I like my hat"; "der [cousin], I wish you cood stae...frum Calvin." I asked Calvin about the note pictured above—'I cant do backflips'. He says: "That's because I can't do backflips now, but I'm going to learn how to do backflips. Then, when I learn to do backflips, I'll cross...
about 1 month ago • 5 min read
Family Photo: Group Interview Last week, I had a group interview as part of my application to Leadership SLO. Leadership SLO is a 10-month community program that explores the inner-workings of San Luis Obispo County. One Friday each month, cohort participants gather to tour a farm, or a police station, or a government building, examining San Luis Obispo and its leadership through different lenses. A friend of mine is in this year's cohort, and encouraged me to apply for 2026. Applying...
about 1 month ago • 6 min read
Family Photo: Missing Tooth Calvin lost a tooth this week! And it is lost... Calvin had a wobbly tooth. He came home from school, ate a snack, and suddenly no longer had a wobbly tooth. He didn't notice this change at the time. Neither did we. We've, um, kept an eye out for the missing tooth, but no luck so far. Does the tooth fairy do swap lines? -- Chippy:This week's tooth adventure reminded me of a tooth adventure from over the summer: While we were in Brazil, one of Calvin's friends...
about 2 months ago • 4 min read
Family Photo: The Artists "Mario Art" [picture from school chalk art festival] On Tuesdays, Calvin has art class. It's something new this year. The school just hired a new art teacher. Every Tuesday, Calvin's class walks across the school to the art studio. Every Tuesday, the art teacher introduces them to a new artist—Warhol, Van Gogh, Picasso. Every Tuesday, Calvin runs to me after school to describe their latest art class adventure—tracing Campbell's soup cans, coloring sunflowers with oil...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
Family Photo: Happening It's all happening. Last week we had lunch at SLO Ranch Farms, which is something of an upscale, agrarian-themed, outdoor mall. It has a brewery, a pizza place, a biscuit place, and a vintage cheese store. It also has a Persian kabob grill, a Japanese sushi table, and a French bakery. There's a coffee shop, a community garden and a "sauna club". And there's also an ice cream shop that shares a wall with a fitness studio. We had the kabobs. They were excellent. It also...
2 months ago • 5 min read
Family Photo: Freedom At the end of each day, after Lawrence's teacher walks his class to the front of the school, she dismisses Lawrence from his line and he runs to me with open arms. It's the greatest thing in the world. -- Freedom is the greatest thing in the world. I want my kids to have freedom: the freedom to be what they want to be, to do what they want to do, to live where they want to live. It's been a difficult week for freedom: a political activist was killed while speaking at a...
2 months ago • 7 min read