Editorial

December 24, 2008

As our family sat at the dining room table tonight in Sausalito and ate Christmas Eve dinner, I was reminded of just how fortunate we are.

OK, I would have felt even more fortunate if somebody’s car alarm didn’t keep going off somewhere up the hill in Hurricane Gulch, but that’s not my point.

Driving down Bridgeway from Mollie Stone’s, ready for the celebration, I was thinking about all the problems we face. So many jobs lost, so many jobs still in danger. The lives still in danger overseas, with soldiers who have no control over the politicians but who still faithfully serve all of us.

Then I thought about all the big anti-aircraft guns embedded in their bunkers within the bluffs at Fort Baker, Fort Cronkhite and above the Golden Gate Bridge. The big guns only a mile or so from the home where our family was gathering.

I thought about the generation of Bay Area people who went through The Depression, and who saw those guns hastily installed after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The generation that turned out to be the parents and grandparents of the editors of oursausalito.com, and of our readers.

Sausalito’s Liberty Ships are a more personal piece of history when family members were among the thousands working together to launch them at such incredible speed.

They got through it somehow. What they faced then was far worse than what we’re facing now. And as we grew up watching them, we saw that they survived and carried on quite well, thank you.

About the time I started to picture those faces from long ago I approached Princess St. and got my first glimpse of the Bay looking straight down Bridgeway. Right about where the image above was taken.

Even with the rain and wind of Christmas Eve, the vista was breathtaking. It reminded me of so many reasons why we are lucky to be part of this place, this community, this country.

Thanks, Sausalito, for helping me keep the right perspective.

Happy Holidays to all, and may 2009 bring you happiness, prosperity, and much to give thanks for next year.