Category Archives: General features

San Francisco's Mission Bay Renewed [Financial Times]

Financial Times, January 13 2007

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It took more than 20 years to negotiate an acceptable plan
but Mission Bay, San Francisco’s newest neighbourhood,
is now thriving, writes Tracey Taylor

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It was described as “the last great hole in the fabric of San Francisco” – 300 acres of blighted land with an abandoned railway yard that once served the city’s bustling docks. Then, in 1998, after more than two decades of tangled planning negotiations, a decision was reached on how to fill it. Today, Mission Bay is a brand new neighbourhood emerging in the middle of a world city, an urbanist vision in the throes of creation.

Strolling through the area, which is just south of downtown San Francisco on its eastern waterfront, one can see the transformation first-hand. Flanked on three sides by the bay, embracing a water channel, Mission Creek, and incorporating an existing public-transit infrastructure, it is a promising site in different stages. Parts of it are still scraggy tracts of wasteland, while others are construction areas with buildings rising at breakneck speed.

There are also now quarters with housing, shops, offices and parks. And two venerable San Francisco institutions have moved in, helping to jump-start regeneration. At Mission Bay’s north gateway is a retro-style stadium for the beloved Giants baseball team built in 2000. South of the channel, a University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), campus dedicated to life sciences is in its second phase of construction, with several teaching and accommodation buildings, a terracotta-hued community centre, leafy plazas and an imposing Richard Serra sculpture. A cancer hospital will complete the biotechnology centre.

The broader $4bn-plus master plan for Mission Bay calls for 6,000 homes, 28 per cent of which will be “affordable” units designed to alleviate the city’s housing shortage; 5m sq ft of commercial office space; a hotel; and integrated parkland.

One of the first projects was a residential block of affordable housing on King Street, north of the creek. There is also a community centre for senior citizens and the first new library built in San Francisco for more than 40 years. Linda Sobuta, principal architect at SMWM, which designed the residential building, describes the arrival of a Safeway grocery store in 2003, as a turning point. “It wasn’t a neighbourhood until Safeway moved in,” she says.

On a walking tour, Sobuta says she’s enjoying watching Mission Bay become an “urban village”. Its grid, she explains, is based on the historic Spanish vara unit that emphasises short blocks with view corridors and pedestrian-friendly access ways. She points to the promenade that has been created alongside the creek with its attractive slabs of single-unit paving stone and high-quality street furniture. The landscaping on the water’s edge has been designed to create a natural habitat for indigenous birds. And the owners of a cluster of houseboats further down the channel have been promised they can stay.

Like any blossoming neighbourhood, Mission Bay has yet to burrow its way into the city’s consciousness. “It’s not yet sizzling. It needs to be scuffed up, to get the patina of use,” says John King, architecture critic at the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper. “But it’s fascinating to see a neighbourhood pop up out of thin air. And it’s a very good long-term investment for San Francisco.”

Donna Dell’Era moved into the area eight months ago. Her top-floor condominium was one of the last available at 235 Berry, a smart residential complex overlooking the creek, where three-bedroom, three-bathroom “townhome-style” homes sold for $1.3m. Dell’Era, who works for a public utility company in the city, describes herself and her husband as empty nesters. They sold their large home in Marin County, across the bay, when their fourth child went to college. “My pipedream for when we retire is to swap condos with people around the world,” she says. “And what better place than this? The interiors are very nice and it has views of water and the city.” Dell’Era also appreciates the neighbourhood feel. She and her husband enjoy meeting fellow dog-owners on walks by the creek and, before Christmas, they attended a tree-trimming party for their building’s residents.

Nelson Rising, the former chairman and chief executive of Catellus Development Corporation, which recreated Mission Bay, also bought a condominium. “I love the convenience,” he says. “I love having restaurants nearby and the fact that I can walk everywhere.” It takes about 15 minutes to walk from his home to the Embarcadero, the foodie heaven that is San Francisco’s Ferry Building and on to the main shopping drag of Market Street.

Catellus, which has since been merged into ProLogis, won the rights to develop Mission Bay after a long history of planning applications that stumbled at the starting block. Rising is credited with having had the vision to craft a proposal that would win approval from notoriously outspoken city residents, who invariably file lawsuits to oppose new projects. “Nelson understands the complexities at the political, environmental and community level,” says Doug Gardner, who led the Mission Bay project at Catellus. “He created the goodwill to make it happen.”

Crucial to the plan was the landmark deal that Rising, with the help of then San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, engineered to attract UCSF, which was considering alternative locations. The university was offered 43 acres of land free, a donation valued at more than $170m. Rising also attributes the proposal’s success to its sensitivity to public policy imperatives. “It included a system of parks, integrated affordable housing and was very transit oriented,” he says. The extent of citizen consultation also helped. “The planning team was respectful of the public realm.”

One controversial issue was building height. In the end restrictions were agreed so that no building is taller than 160ft, roughly the same height as the ballpark’s main tower. This is a point of contention for some. “San Francisco used to be violently against height but you only have to look at the city’s skyline to see to what extent that has changed,” King says. “The danger with long-range planning is that it’s too time-consuming to revisit it. Now we have a collection of short, squat buildings at Mission Bay.” But residents of Potrero Hill, to the west of the area, made it clear that they wouldn’t tolerate having their bay views obstructed.

There is one wrinkle in Mission Bay’s grand plan: the dotcom bust and subsequent economic fall-out that left a recommendation for 5m sq ft of commercial space looking optimistic. “So far they have only built 600,000 sq ft due to lack of demand,” says Amy Neches, senior project manager for Mission Bay at the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency. “It will take time. It’s a 20- to 30-year development project and it’s based on the knowledge that real estate markets work in cycles.”

Otherwise, Mission Bay appears to tick most of the boxes for a grand-scale, mixed-use urban development. Jim Chappell, president of public policy think-tank San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association, which consulted on the process, deems it to be a “great success”. “The big surprise is the aggressiveness with which the university has been able to develop its projects. They have led the private sector and been the engine of the project,” he says. Chappell also believes having a single developer was an asset. “Mission Bay demonstrates one of the advantages of a large-scale co-ordinated development. You can’t provide all the amenities with a parcel-by-parcel approach.” Perhaps most importantly, he adds, the area’s residential market flourished immediately. “Housing has flown off the shelf.”

It’s possible that Mission Bay, one of the largest ongoing urban developments in the US, will one day be seen as a model of how it’s done. At the very least people might be drawn there for a little sunshine. In a city notorious for its fog and damp, the developers are keen to point out that the new neighbourhood offers not only terrific new lifestyle but also a superior microclimate.

Relocation: I'm an Executive, Get me Out of Here [Financial Times]

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Financial Times, March 4, 2006

Last summer I cleared my house out until all that was left were bare floorboards and dustballs and I moved, with my family, to California. I thought I had covered all the bases, as far as you can when you are starting a new life on the other side of the world. We found a family naive enough to want to rent our house and embark on the wretched experience that is school selection in inner London. The possessions that remained after the big cull – 109 boxes of books principally – left Tilbury Docks on a ship bound for the US. We found somewhere to live and a school for the children and, within a few weeks, had settled into the American way of life.

The important things went right. But, of course, there were hitches. No move is without them. The removal company held on to our possessions until we agreed to pay a substantial supplementary bill. They said we had underestimated the volume of the consignment. US Customs refused to release our container because the paperwork wasn’t in order. When the goods were eventually released, my computer’s hard drive had died. A small-print clause I had failed to spot in our insurance meant that we were not covered. With no financial rating in the US, I was denied a credit card, and my US bank froze my account several times, ominously citing anti-terrorism legislation. Oh, and my application for health insurance was turned down.

There were no such irritations for Ian McGeechan, who recently took up the post of director of rugby at UK Premiership champions London Wasps. This involved a move from Scotland, where he was director of rugby for the Scottish RFU, to somewhere within a commutable distance from London. McGeechan handed over the logistics of the move to the Relocation Bureau, a small UK-based company whose clients include Logitech, Amazon.com, Volvo and Cancer Research UK.

The timing of McGeechan’s move south was awkward in that it coincided with him having to be in New Zealand for the 2005 Lions Tour. “As I was 12,000 miles away from my wife, it was comforting for her to know that somebody was responsible for the move,” he says. “The Relocation Bureau co-ordinated everything. They scouted out areas for us to live and narrowed down a selection of houses. They got a good feel of what my wife wanted in a house and, once we had chosen one, they co-ordinated solicitors, builders and so on. They always kept us informed and dealt with all the details – even organising for a new fence to be built around the house before we moved in. I couldn’t have done any of that so it was good to feel the process was under control.”

McGeechan’s move was relatively straightforward, and domestic. But relocation companies really come into their own for globetrotters such as Nico Kelling, a senior manager at Infineon, the German semiconductor specialist. When Kelling moved from his home in Munich to Indiana for the company in 1998 he managed the relocation himself. “I spoke English and it was a short-term post so I just needed to find a furnished apartment to rent, which was easy,” he says. But in December 2005, when Infineon assigned Kelling to Tokyo, they offered him the services of a specialist, Going-There Destination Services. “They carried out a home search and handled all the red tape such as alien registration with local authorities and setting up a bank account. They organised an initial orientation tour of the city and helped with questions I had over a driver’s licence and phone service,” says Kelling.

“The biggest challenge in Tokyo is the language barrier, so it was time-saving to have help, particularly on the negotiations relating to my rental contract, which would have been more difficult to do alone.” He adds that he suspects having a Japanese-speaking expert on hand probably also widened his choice of places to live. “My options would have been limited to apartments with landlords who spoke English had I been looking on my own,” he says.

Linda Behnke, a partner at Golding Capital Partners, is a serial globetrotter. She relocated four times in 10 years for a previous employer, flitting between Munich, New York and San Francisco. Each move was managed by Mobility Services International, a company that claims to “demystify relocation”.

“They handled all aspects of the physical move,” she says. “I was very happy with them so used them every time.” Nevertheless she says each move was progressively more difficult. “This is partly because you amass more.” But the more angst-inducing aspects were out of her – and the relocators’ – control. “Every time we moved, the removal company underestimated the fee. I think it’s because they are aware that there are other [higher] bids and they figure they can’t lose as they will just change the price later,” she says.

Linda says each move has resulted in breakages, although they have all been covered by insurance. She also underwent the heart- stopping experience of $50,000 “going missing” as it was being transferred between her European and US bank accounts. Only dogged persistence on her part in getting the banks to tackle the problem – and the paper (and e-mail) trail she had kept of all her correspondence on the matter – resulted in her funds reappearing five weeks later. Her advice now: find a bank that is accustomed to dealing with ex-pats and clients on the move.

Having learned the hard way, Linda has two more tips for those relocating: “The move will always cost 20 per cent to 25 per cent more than you think it will and the consignment will always arrive later than promised,” she says.

These days, in a pressure-cooker global career market where a senior executive might be assigned a new post with as little as a week’s notice, corporations routinely offer the services of a relocation company along with the transfer orders. Big multinationals move between 1 per cent and 4 per cent of their employees around the world every year and turn to relocation specialists such as Cendant, Prudential, Sirva and Weichert to help them do it. Many of the these behemoths include removal companies and real-estate networks in their corporate portfolios.

The benefits offered in a relocation package differ from one company to the next, and are negotiable depending on the seniority of the employee, the degree to which the corporation wants to retain him or her, and the perceived “hardship” factor of the move. Along with the task of physically moving a household and its contents, services may include assistance with selling an existing home, identifying suitable neighbourhoods and schools, as well as financing a home purchase in the new location. Orientation services may include guidance on setting up bank accounts and getting connected with local ISPs, access to on-the-ground agents with local expertise, as well as “spouse support”, which might include information on local job resources or educational courses.

Companies engage relocators with one main objective: to move an employee swiftly and with the minimum amount of upheaval, so that they are at their desk and functional as soon as possible. “From a company viewpoint, the employee is at work working rather than house hunting, school hunting, or putting up pictures,” says Craig Vassie, a partner at The Relocation Bureau. Or, as John Arcario, executive vice-president at Cendant Mobility, puts it: “If somebody is moved without a relocation expert it’s the employer that suffers because you end up with a distracted employee and a potentially unsuccessful move.”

Chuck Stewart, client services director at Going-There, says cost- cutting has had an effect on the nature of the perks offered by corporate relocation. Increasingly, advantages such as the employer buying and selling-on a home, bridging loans and compensation for a spouse’s lost earnings are reserved for the “top brass”, he says. And some companies are choosing the self-help option. “There’s a trend for companies to give employees a lump sum and tell them to manage the move themselves,” he says.

There is no average cost for a relocation. Variables such as the value of an employee’s home and his or her seniority all play a part. The Relocation Bureau charges about £5,000 to relocate what it terms an “executive family”. At the other end of the scale Arcario estimates that the outlay for a multinational moving a senior executive with expensive housing requirements from New York to London would be well in excess of the value of his or her annual salary.

It is not just the corporate world that hires relocation companies. Two years ago the University of Southampton introduced relocation services as part of its staff recruitment policy. “We wanted to attract the best staff from wherever they were based geographically,” says Zelda Franklin-Hills, the university’s head of staff diversity. “It is stressful moving to a new job and it makes sense to offer support to ease those pressures so new staff can settle in and contribute to the university quickly.” Franklin- Hills has also observed how an offer of help with relocation can make the difference between a faculty member accepting a post at the university or elsewhere. “It can be the deciding factor between one job and another,” she says.

Although it is difficult to see how having expert guidance cannot be beneficial for people on the move, there are times when relocation companies can be more of a hindrance than a help. This proved the case for one family who moved within the US last year. The non-profit organisation for which the husband is a director selected a relocation agent, ostensibly to work on the family’s behalf. The agent was to sell the family’s existing home and help them find a new one in the city they were moving to, as well as manage the bridging loan provided by the husband’s employer and oversee the transportation of their goods. However, because the agent was overseeing the financial side of the move, which directly implicated the employer, the family didn’t feel their interests were being best served.

The relocator also appointed a real-estate agent based in a town 20 miles from where the family wanted to live. Feeling he lacked the local knowledge they needed, the family had to negotiate to select their own realtor. “There were times when we seriously thought about getting shot of the relocator,” says the mother of the family, who would rather not be identified, “even if that meant sacrificing the benefits that were being offered, such as the loan to buy a new home.”

In the end, though, a good experience with a relocation company can mean the difference between a successful move and one that flounders or fails. Had I been forewarned about consignment size, credit ratings and how to fill in a health insurance application, I may have avoided some of the headaches of my move.

The value of having someone on hand with local expertise is also repeatedly cited by relocation companies and those who have used them as being critical to a smooth transition. “You might be moving to the Bay Area in California, but do you know which neighbourhoods have the right schools for your children, employment possibilities for your spouse and like-minded communities to live in?” says Arcario at Cendant Mobility.

Meanwhile Vassie at The Relocation Bureau recalls a case of an American executive who was moving to the UK for her first overseas posting for a large multinational. “She was being helped by US ‘counsellors’ based in Connecticut,” he says. “As she needed to be within reach of Heathrow and a factory in Peterborough she was advised to live in King’s Cross.” It was a few years before the current regeneration scheme, and “it took us a while to persuade her that living next door to pimps and drug addicts wasn’t exactly a good idea.”

Puritan Pleasure: Palazzo Ducale, Venice [FT Magazine]

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Financial Times, January 8th, 2005

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Venice has many magical qualities, but its tendency to draw crowds isn’t one of them. So it is smugly satisfying to discover a way to avoid them entirely in the Palazzo Ducale (the Doge’s Palace), one of La Serenissima’s most popular attractions.

The “Secret Itinerary” is a private tour through parts of the palace that are not usually open to the public. A phone call at least a week in advance secures you a very special 90 minutes.

Having ascended the ornate, gilded steps of Scala d’Oro with the heaving masses, our guide unlocked a small, plain door and we left the hordes behind, slipping into a warren of tiny, wood-panelled offices where the real, day-to-day business of this, the nerve centre of the Venetian empire, took place.

The warren of tiny rooms is little changed from when the city’s clerks worked there in the 1790s – there are simple candle-sconces on the walls and scrubbed desks for the mountains of paperwork.

Up some narrow steps we came to the elegant chancellery, lined with map cupboards for storing treaties. Up again are the piombi, prison cells reserved for the more notorious criminals (petty offenders were kept on the ground floor). In his memoirs, Casanova tells of how he made a daring escape from here – stopping for a morning espresso at Caffe Florian before making his getaway by gondola.

We entered the torture chamber, where a single, ominous rope hangs from the rafters. Here, suspects were suspended by their wrists and questioned by the three “judges of the night”. But, the best is saved for last: right up under the eaves is the underside of a huge “floating” ceiling belonging to one of the state rooms below. Built by the Arsenale’s shipwrights in 1577, its muddle of criss-crossing beams is a formidable feat of engineering.

Emerging back into the public rooms we were invited to continue visiting the palace independently. We resisted. Somehow it would have felt too ordinary.

The “Secret Itinerary” costs Euros 315 per person, 00 39 041 520 9070.

Puritan Pleasure: Open houses [FT Magazine]

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Financial Times, April 1st, 2006

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If, like me, you relish taking post-prandial strolls around your neighbourhood purely so you can peer into people’s front rooms before they have shut the curtains for the night, the appeal of one of the US’s most popular Sunday pastimes will be obvious.

Open-housing is about more than keeping an eye on the property market. It provides a sheen of respectability to what is little more than glorified snooping. It’s also free and can be enjoyed by all ages.

It works this way: over coffee on Sunday morning you peruse the Open Houses pages of your local paper and map out your day. All the houses for sale are open from 2pm to 4.30pm, so other plans need to be scheduled accordingly. Many of the listings include a line- drawing of the home in question – vulgar photography is reserved for houses of the lower order.

There are different types of pleasures to be had from prying into other people’s homes. There is the bittersweet gratification of finding that the multimillion-dollar, architect-designed show stopper with its wrap-around deck and outdoor hot tub is the stuff of your dreams; and there is smug superiority, as in “I can’t believe someone with such obvious wealth has such appalling taste.”

In the part of California where I indulge this hobby the architectural styles range from modernist hill houses with great views of San Francisco, to delightful, shingled craftsman homes with their dark panelling and built-in cabinetry.

There is also fun to be had in discovering what the professional “home stagers” have been up to. Their presence is obvious in any house in the $2m-plus bracket in the Bay Area – spot the potted succulents on the porch, the tray of wine and (plastic) nibbles and the covetable linen on the plumped-up beds – I have even seen a guitarist strumming in a rose garden as the hordes poke their collective nose into the guest cottage.

What can I say? Legitimate voyeurism: it beats snoozing with the Sunday supplements.

Donald Gunn: A Need to Measure Success [Financial Times]

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Financial Times, May 11, 2004

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Never underestimate the importance of awards to the advertising industry. Anecdotes abound of the lengths agencies will go to to secure a prize. One French network promised each of its creative directors a share in a €1.5m ($1.77m) bounty if their work made it into one league table, and a Brazilian agency chief ordered his creative team to come in at the weekend “so that they could do the ads for Cannes”.

In some quarters there is a cynical belief that certain campaigns are created with a view to winning awards for agencies rather than driving sales for clients, or that competition juries favour big-budget and cutting-edge campaigns with which mainstream viewers are rarely familiar. None of which will, of course, prevent the industry’s creative tribes from descending on Cannes next month for the Golden Lion advertising awards festival, the industry’s equivalent of the Oscars.

Donald Gunn knows more than most about awards. Once dubbed “the man with the best job in advertising”, Mr Gunn, who spent three decades at Leo Burnett, has latterly dedicated his career to analysing creativity and tracking the best-regarded advertising and the agencies or countries which produce it. The results appear every November in the Gunn Report, probably the most respected, and certainly the best-read, measure of excellence in an industry obsessed by rankings.

So, to what does he attribute this compulsion to be honoured? “In every field there is an appetite to be the best and for that to be celebrated,” he says. He concedes that, compared with other creative industries such as music or design, advertising has a disproportionate number of awards. But their role in powering the business is fundamental, he says.

For agencies, awards create a virtuous circle: they establish reputation, attract talent and bring in new business. Even so, Mr Gunn believes they should be seen only as the icing on the cake. “Agencies should set out to create the best advertising for their clients. Winning an award is a bonus.”

The benefits may not be so obvious for advertisers. “Awards are not a priority for advertisers, but they do want the best, most original advertising, so an award provides reassurance: they are getting good work and they have good people at their agency.”

Mr Gunn has also examined the relationship between creativity and effec tiveness and has proved to his satisfaction that award-winning advertising increases market share. A study of 400 of the most-awarded campaigns in the world between 1992 and 1995 found that 86.5 per cent of the ads were associated with market success. In other words, ads with award-winning qualities were two and a half times more likely to achieve, or surpass, clients’ objectives. Leo Burnett reprised Mr Gunn’s study in 2002 and unveiled similar results: four out of five award-winning campaigns achieved positive market results for clients.

Mr Gunn’s insights stem from his experience as an agency creative chief and from the phenomenal databank that forms the backbone of the Gunn Report, launched in 1999.

While at Leo Burnett, Mr Gunn founded two institutions that still set creative benchmarks today: the Great Commercials Library, started in 1986, and the Global Product Committee. The latter involves a commitment that many agencies would find daunting: every three months, 20 of Leo Burnett’s top creative staff from around the world meet for a week to view the entire network’s output. Ads are scored and feedback is given.

To compile his report, Mr Gunn combines the winner lists from 52 national, regional and global award schemes (32 for television, 20 for print). But, just like Coca-Cola’s secret recipe, he has never revealed which ones they are. He says this is to avoid harming the contests that are not included (though it also makes it impossible for agencies to challenge the rankings). After much data-crunching, the league tables emerge – including top commercials, top agencies, top production companies and top countries – as well as a Showreel of the Year featuring the 100 most-awarded campaigns in the world.

Given Mr Gunn’s influence in the industry, one wonders if his rankings have ever been questioned, or if he has been offered incentives to skew results. “Much to my amazement nobody has ever seriously challenged the tables,” he says, “although there have been the usual queries about methodology”. A US network once hired a headhunter to find out which awards had made it into the report; it failed.

“There was a theory at one point that if you threw money at the awards and entered the maximum number of shows, you would come out well,” he says. “In fact, the agencies that spend the most are often those who are entering mediocre work.”

He has his own view about what makes an award-winning ad. He believes an agency’s shared vision and passion for good work – as well as a willingness to take risks – are more important than incentives (such as bonuses), or even strong leadership.

He has identified 12 “master-formats” which, he says, are a good starting point for delivering a selling idea in an engaging way: “Sitting down with a blank sheet to create an ad can be a lonely, scary process.” Approaches such as the testimonial or the celebrity endorsement can dramatise a proposition. Mr Gunn will flesh out his master-formats concept at a presentation in Cannes this year.

Mr Gunn has also spotted a welcome rise in creative standards across the world. “Three years ago, there were 22 markets represented in the 100 best commercials reel. Last year there were 28. Countries such as Canada, Mexico and India are moving up,” he says. Australia, he notes, has regressed since its 1980s heyday, while China has improved as Hong Kong talent has moved into Shanghai and Beijing.

This year, Mr Gunn is handing on the bulk of the work involved in compiling the report to his sister-in-law and brother-in-law. But, before then, he must complete possibly his most ambitious project to date: an online library of award-winning advertising he has tracked since 1962. “It will deliberately be the smallest online commercials library because it will only feature the best – and all the best – ads from around the world,” he says. The Gunn Report Library will be launched by BEAM TV this summer.

Mr Gunn claims he is taking it easy, but his diary tells another story. He has just returned from an advertising conference in Argentina, and later this year will attend festivals in Asia and eastern Europe, as well as Cannes. For this “awards supremo”, it is business as usual.

Harry Potter and the Gaelic Revolution [The Guardian]

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Tuesday December 23, 2003

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Scotland’s ancient language is making a comeback,
explains Tracey Taylor

As children, Mary Galbraith’s grandparents were belted if they were overheard speaking Gaelic in the playground, even though it was the language they spoke at home. Even as adults they never properly mastered English. Just two generations later, Galbraith’s commitment to her grandparents’ native tongue is such that although she doesn’t speak it herself she sends her two daughters, Seona and Moire, to a school where the entire curriculum is taught in Gaelic.

Glasgow Gaelic school (Bunsgoil Gáidhlig Ghlaschu) is Scotland’s only dedicated Gaelic-speaking school. Children have all their lessons in the language and only start some lessons in English after they have been there three years. However, across Scotland more than 5,000 children learn Gaelic, many of them from homes where neither parent speaks the language.

What motivates parents to have their children learn a minority language? Gaelic is in decline – 99% of Scots don’t understand a word of it and, if the number of speakers falls below 50,000 (it now stands at around 60,000), Gaelic will be officially dead. Nevertheless, the Scottish Executive invests more than £3m a year in Gaelic education. A Gaelic language bill, currently in draft stage, is due to be introduced to parliament next summer with the aim of securing the status of Gaelic in Scotland.

For Mary Galbraith the answer is straightforward: “I wanted to give my children an opportunity that wasn’t there for me. I never learned Gaelic. The girls were looked after by a Gaelic-speaking childminder so they were already bilingual. It made sense that they continued with a Gaelic-medium education.”

Reconnecting with one’s roots and cultural heritage is clearly a significant factor. Gaelic was the main language in most rural areas of Scotland until the early 17th century, but it was outlawed by the crown in 1616, and suppressed further after the Jacobite rebellion of 1745. “For hundreds of years, and until fairly recently, Gaelic was seen as a second-class language,” says Margaret Maciver, educational officer at Comunn Na Gáidhlig, a body set up to promote Gaelic.

Bringing up children to be bilingual has been shown to offer other, more general advantages including enhanced creative thinking, improved test results, higher self-esteem and greater tolerance. For this reason it is not only those with Gaelic ancestry who are rediscovering Scotland’s mother tongue. “We see families who have moved from England who are having their children taught Gaelic as it is the ‘local’ language,” says Donald John McCloud, Gaelic education advisor for the Highland council which, along with the Western Islands, embraces the Gaelic heartland.

These facts are not lost on Caroline Stewart, mother to seven-year-old Alexander, who also attends Glasgow Gaelic school. “My older daughter spent a year at school in France and has spoken French since. Children who speak more than one language have been shown to have better cognitive skills. I wanted Alexander to be bilingual so I was looking for a school that taught a second language. The fact he was learning Gaelic rather than another language was secondary at first. But now I am pleased: the more I learn about the history of the language the more important I feel it is to preserve it.”

Gaelic now features at all levels of Scottish education: pre-school, primary, secondary, further and higher education, and as part of teacher training. In 2002-2003 there were 1,928 primary-level and 375 secondary-level children in Gaelic-medium education. Another 3,000, approximately, learn Gaelic as a second language, usually in special Gaelic-language units within schools. The number of Gaelic-speaking teachers graduating in 2003 was 25 (for primary school teaching), an increase of eight on the number qualifying in 2002.

These are not big numbers and, despite the avowed support of Peter Peacock, Scotland’s minister for education and young people, who has said his aim is to ensure Gaelic “survives and thrives”, the Gaelic lobby faces a struggle. Obstacles include a lack of Gaelic-speaking teachers, a paucity of teaching materials and a drop-off in the provision of Gaelic education at secondary level. Detractors also point to the limited usefulness of Gaelic compared to, say, a modern European language in the increasingly globalised career market.

Boyd Robertson, senior lecturer in Gaelic at the University of Strathclyde, which trains Gaelic teachers, says the teacher-shortage problem needs to be solved urgently, particularly within secondary schools. “At the primary level there is something of an equilibrium between supply and demand, but the numbers of secondary school teachers are not growing in the way that is required.”

Supporters of Gaelic tend to look for inspiration to Wales, where concerted efforts since the 1930s have resulted in census figures that show that 26% of people under the age of 35 can now speak Welsh, which has been included in the national curriculum since 1988. One in five primary pupils are taught in classes where Welsh is used either as the main medium or for teaching part of the curriculum; one in seven secondary school children are taught Welsh as a first language, and four in five learn it as a second language.

One technique used to accelerate the take-up of Welsh has been “immersion education”, a concept that is now being put into practice in Scotland. The idea is for children as young as nursery school age to “plunge” into a language completely speaking, reading and writing it all day.

In order for Gaelic to have a good chance of reproducing itself, at least a third of under-25-year-olds need to speak the language. Scotland is a long way off achieving this. The Scottish Executive, which earlier this year set up Bórd na Gáidhlig, a development body to promote Gaelic, has given itself a target of a 5% annual increase in the number of Gaelic medium-educated primary school children. Privately, however, civil servants admit they would like to see a much higher take-up. “To be truthful, we are very jealous of Wales,” says one.

The pupils at Glasgow Gaelic school can take credit for a small victory in the crusade. Fed-up that they couldn’t read about their favourite fictional character in Gaelic, this summer they sent dozens of letters to Bloomsbury, publishers of Harry Potter. As a result, a Gaelic edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone looks set to appear next year.

Online Support: Berkeley Parents Network [The Guardian]

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The Guardian, March 30th, 2005

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Tracey Taylor was blown away by a Californian online network for mums. But is there anything like it here?

Earlier this month, Maria was feeling desperate: alone at home with two young children and a husband who worked all hours, she was sleep-deprived and depressed. She submitted a posting about being at the end of her tether to an online parenting network. Within two days she received 27 email replies from mothers in her neighbourhood. They offered practical advice on good therapists and playgroups that would give her a break from the children, as well as many sympathetic reassurances of the “You are not alone” variety.

This was Berkeley Parents Network, a US service I discovered when preparing for my family’s move this summer from London to California. Since subscribing to the free network, I have received an overwhelming amount of information about this leafy suburb of San Francisco.

While worrying about how I could avoid becoming either a “soccer mom” or a Desperate Housewife, I also needed practical information such as: which neighbourhoods were the most desirable and/or affordable, how to find a house for rent and schools to shortlist. I now know which paediatrician my two boys “must” sign up with and where to find a babysitting cooperative, as well as a multimedia summer camp (whatever that is).

Angela, who recommended her paediatrician, has been a regular correspondent. She has already done extensive – bordering on obsessive – research on schools for her offspring and, although my views do not always correspond with hers, her advice has been welcome.

Berkeley Parents Network was started by Ginger Ogle in 1993 – before the worldwide web in its current form even existed. Ogle was a computer science graduate student at Berkeley with two school-age children. Originally a list of 14 student parents campaigning for improved parental leave, the database grew to encompass all parents on the campus, then, eventually, was made open to all parents in the community.

Today, this non-profit-making, parent-run email forum has a subscriber base of more than 10,000, most of whom are parents or carers who look after young children and who live in Berkeley, with its population of around 100,000.

BPN works entirely online, predominantly by email. Busy parents post questions about child-rearing, local resources and community events, look for childcare and sell household items. Newsletter digests with dozens of parents’ questions and the responses they generate are emailed to subscribers eight-10 times a week. As Ogle puts it: “Our success is a combination of an early start, my technical background and an unending supply of smart and altruistic parents.”

What is surprising is that such patently useful grassroots services have been relatively slow to take off, even in tech-savvy America. “I hear about other lists for parents but they are much smaller – at the level of a neighbourhood or a school,” says Ogle. “There are for-profit efforts too that have mostly not worked out, although I continue to hear about these.”

So, does the UK offer anything as useful and well-run as Berkeley Parents Network? No – but there are encouraging signs. Netmums.com, for instance, bills itself as a “local network by mums for mums” and hosts local sites around the country that include forums such as Meet a Mum and Buy and Sell. Some are more trafficked than others. When I looked up my area in south-east London it had only one posting listed under Childcare, two items for sale in the Nearly New listing and a mere handful of email exchanges from mothers wanting to meet up. However, the Bristol section is very active. And the Harrow and Hillingdon section, where the site has its roots, has 5,000 members and its discussion boards are buzzing.

BPN demonstrates how “nappy valley” neighbourhoods can exploit the web to help create dynamic and mutually supportive communities. Clearly these online tribes can go some way to replacing the extended families of past generations. When I move to the west coast and am looking for a soccer club for my football-mad nine-year-old, I’ll know who to call.

Tea with the FT: Barbara Ehrenreich [Financial Times]

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Financial Times, February 18th, 2006

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First it was blue-collar misery in America – now the writer has exposed the lot of its corporate workers, writes Tracey Taylor

As soon as I meet Barbara Ehrenreich, renowned chronicler of America’s working class, we are thrown into an awkward social moment. Our plan is have tea somewhere inside the swanky Mark Hopkins Intercontinental Hotel in San Francisco. We wander into a restaurant off the hotel’s lobby that looks appropriate but a woman behind a desk stops us and says we need to be club members to eat or drink there. As we turn on our heels, Ehrenreich mutters: “You see, you come somewhere as upscale as this – which I’m not used to at all by the way – and you think you have reached the top. Then you realise there is a whole other level.”

The incident doesn’t phase Ehrenreich. You sense that there isn’t much that would. This is a writer who chose to work as a waitress, stack shelves at Wal-Mart and clean “three different kinds of shit stains” from toilets as a housekeeper to gather material for her best-known book: Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. And this at an age when most people would be comfortably retired.

Ehrenreich, who is 64, has a brisk manner and a practical appearance: her hair is cut in a bob and she is wearing black trousers, a coral shirt and what she describes as “slouchy” flat sandals. She assumed a new identity to see at first hand how the other half live for Nickel and Dimed, which was on the New York Times bestseller list for almost two years after it was published in 2001.

The “immersion” style of writing is in the tradition of George Orwell, whose descriptions of coal miners in The Road to Wigan Pier aimed to shock middle-class readers out of their complacency. Ehrenreich herself has spawned imitators in the UK and Australia. Her new book, Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream, (which comes out in paperback in the UK in March) takes the same approach but this time her focus is on the white-collar world – the middle managers and account executives who toil at the corporate coalface.

These are the people “who did everything right”. They earned degrees, postponed child-bearing and dedicated themselves to climbing the career ladder. But now, as Ehrenreich describes it, they are in trouble. Setting out to find a job as a PR director or speechwriter, Ehrenreich found a white-collar netherworld full of people who have been downsized or outsourced or were still employed but heard “the drumbeats of lay- offs”; or had survived cuts but were burning out doing the jobs of two people.

Ehrenreich found the project hard-going, she tells me, as we settle at a table in a rather soulless dining area where we have been assured we will be served tea. “It was more enjoyable with Nickel and Dimed,” she says. “I liked the camaraderie of the workplace. There might have been similar camaraderie in some white-collar places but I got the feeling that it is very different, that people are more anxious and mutually distrustful in the white-collar world. A lot of people described the workplace to me as cold and unwelcoming. “I don’t mind manual labour,” she continues. “And I like the straightforwardness of the blue-collar world in that there is a job, youdo it and you get paid fo rthe job. There is not all this . . . ” – she pauses before choosing a word that she thinks can be printed in the Financial Times – ” . . . this manipulation about attitude and personality.”

Ehrenreich, who has been gesticulating to make her point, stops talking and looks flustered. She explains she is concerned that our waiter, who is standing some feet away, may have interpreted her hand movements as a rather cavalier summons. She mouths apologies to him. Maybe her experience as a waitress explains why Ehrenreich is going out of her way to be nice to the waiter. (I, on the other hand, am feeling less sympathetic and would be happy if this particular one did his job: we have been in the deserted restaurant for more than 10 minutes and he has not yet taken our order.)

The manipulation Ehrenreich refers to is most apparent in what she discovers is called the “transition industry” – the career coaches who help reveal one’s “true occupational passion”. What Ehrenreich finds galling, rather than amusing, however is the message the coaches invariably impart to their vulnerable, often depressed audience, about blame. “I could see this philosophy being dumped on people – this new-age idea that it is really your fault because you control everything with your attitude,” she says.

The job-seekers Ehrenreich meets in the book seem prepared to take this analysis at face value. I ask her why she thinks that is. “I think this mind-over- matter idea is quite deep-seated in American culture. In fact, I encountered it and wrote about it when I was being treated for breast cancer five years ago. There is this strong ideology that it is all in your attitude whether you recover or not. It creeped me right out. You find it in the 19th century with Mary Baker Eddy, in the mid-20th century with Norman Vincent Peale and with EST (Erhard Seminar Training) in the 1970s.”

The waiter arrives to take our order and Ehrenreich again apologises to him for what he may have interpreted as her “uppity” behaviour earlier. She orders an iced latte – decaf, one shot, with 2 per cent fat milk. The waiter mishears and assumes she wants iced tea so she reiterates the minutiae of her order. She collects her thoughts and sighs. “I really don’t know what to make of the corporate world after all this. A great deal is being demanded of white-collar workers that has nothing to do with getting the job done. There seems to be so much emphasis on relationships: do you get along with people? They say 90 per cent of hiring decisions are based on an emotional response to you. I am so amazed by this world where decisions are so irrational, where there is a lot of delusional thinking going on – controlling the universe with your thought forms, for example. It makes me wonder how anything gets done.” She laughs: “Then I suddenly realised: this is the culture that leads to Michael D. Brown heading up Fema. I’m sure he’s likeable and he knew all the right people – dresses nicely, good-looking fellow. Probably a lot of fun to have a Margarita with.” [Brown was the Bush-nominated head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency who lost his job after what critics saw as a bungled response to Hurricane Katrina.]

Despite almost 10 months of searching and an investment of more than $5,000, Ehrenreich failed to find a job. She had honed her CV to perfection, had a makeover, networked frantically, and displayed admirable flexibility, “applying at one point for a job as PR director of the American Diabetes Association and then switching sides and offering myself to Hershey’s”.

“I now realise that it was a kind of hubris to imagine I could find a job in half a year or so,” she says. “As I got into it and began to meet all these seemingly terrifically well-qualified people who had been searchingfor well over a year, I thought, ‘this is what it is really about, the white-collar underworld’.”

So the book ends up being a call to arms. Ever the activist, Ehrenreich urges the unemployed, and the anxiously employed, to exploit the endless networking events they attend. “If people had been allowed to, say, share their stories, that would have broken through some of the feelings of isolation and worthlessness.”

She says she wants those that read the book to realise that it’s not their fault if they are being badly treated by companies. “I see it as a possible antidote to [the business tome] Who Moved my Cheese? which says, ‘You’re going to get jerked around, get used to it.’ I would like people to read Bait and Switch and think, ‘Yeah that was ridiculous’ – to feel free to have such a subversive thought.”

Ehrenreich advocates fundamental change at policy level, too: “There is a simple agenda: one, let’s get going on universal health insurance: having it attached to your job is ridiculous. Two, let’s have a more secure and adequate unemployment compensation. And third, let’s stop tax breaks and subsidies to corporations that are made in the name of job creation but actually have nothing to do with it.”

At this point Ehrenreich’s mobile phone rings and she excuses herself to see who the call is from. “I just want to check whether it is one of my children or someone else,” she says squinting at the phone’s small screen. “No it is a publisher,” she snarls, “To hell with you.” Her phone rings again and she frowns, making clear it is her publisher again. “I see that 212 area code [her US publishers are in New York], then my cellphone died as far as I’m concerned.”

So what does she see as the way forward for corporations? “We have to find ways to make corporations more accountable to the people they serve. I don’t think they just serve the shareholders – there should be a broader vision of stakeholders, which includes consumers, communities and employees.”

As we get up to leave, Ehrenreich points to the pretty three-tier cake stand on the table next to ours. It is filled with delicate sandwiches and petits-fours in pastel hues. “Look what we missed,” she says, grinning. But somehow the image of Ehrenreich sipping Earl Grey tea from a bone-china cup and nibbling on miniature cakes doesn’t quite cut it. The immaculately groomed ladies of leisure who are doing so are enjoying the fruits of capitalism. Ehrenreich is too busy fighting its flaws.

California Dreams: Norah and Norman Stone [Financial Times]

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Financial Times, May 27th 2006

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Six of the eight bedrooms in Norah and Norman Stone’s mansion have been given over to art. But the San Francisco power couple assure me that the encroaching collection has required no real sacrifice on their part and no significant alterations to their beautiful Arthur Brown-designed house.

“I was actually pleased to have the housekeeper move out and be replaced by Jason Rhoades and Matthew Barney,” says Norah, referring to the top floor where they now keep several pieces by the two artists.

A tour of Stones’ home, which has views from Presidio Heights over the city and the bay, reveals just how inventive they have been when it comes to sharing their living space with their art. What is particularly striking is the juxtaposition of the many uncompromisingly modern pieces with the more traditional, elegant surroundings, originally created by the renowned interior designer Frances Elkins.

In the entrance hall, against a background of sumptuous antique Chinese wallpaper, hangs “La Poupée” (1938) by Hans Bellmer. One of Joseph Beuys’ ”vitrine” works, housed in a rectangular glass case on legs, stands nearby. “You don’t see many of those in people’s hallways,” quips Norman. Tucked into a closet – the Stones admit they struggled to find the right place – is a sound piece by Stephen Vitiello that includes recordings made in the World Trade Center in 1999.

In the relatively small, formal dining room two giant wall pieces by Jeff Koons, “Balloon Dog” (1996) and “Cheeky” (2000) face off against a large Andy Warhol self-portrait, “Fright Wig” (1986). Strolling through the living room you spot a familiar image of the Mona Lisa complete with moustache and goatee – Marcel Duchamp’s “L.H.O.O.Q.” (1940).

The Stones like to contextualise their collection by including pieces by a previous generation of avant-garde artists that influenced many of the younger names in their collection. Thus, on an upper floor, Robert Gober’s “Pair of Urinals” (1987) echoes Duchamp’s succès de scandale, “Fontaine” (1917).

Norman, who is president of his family’s foundation, explains the rationale behind their acquisitions: “The wisest thing to do is to know your end-game,” he says. “We collect museum-quality pieces so that in the end they will go to museums.” (The Stones have ties to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney and the Tate Modern, among others.) “Our mission is to act differently.”

Some of the work is highly provocative. But, says Norman, who is a psychologist by training, and who works regularly as a psychological counsellor with young people at a local community centre: “Our art addresses upsetting issues and I don’t feel good about them but they exist and should not be shirked.”

As one explores the house, it’s clear that every possible nook and cranny has been exploited as space to show art. In a labyrinthine series of rooms in the basement one happens across Keith Tyson’s 2002 Turner Prize-winning “Bubble Chambers”. Also below ground-level, a long whitewashed room acts as a minimalist gallery with works by Donald Judd and Richard Serra as well as one of Andy Warhol’s Rorschach paintings.

Even the garage, which houses his ‘n’ hers Porsches, has been put to use. When Norman decided to buy “Electric Earth”, a video piece by Doug Aitken, he realised the five screens and 1,200 ft of space it required would pose something of a challenge. The solution was a linear version of the piece, created by the artist, with just one screen which drops down for viewing once the cars have been relegated to the street.

Maintenance issues inevitably arise with such an eclectic collection. A Jeff Koons work, “Two Ball Total Equilibrium Tank” (1985), which consists of two Spalding basketballs in a tank of distilled water, requires a regular water change. Unfortunately the person who had been performing this task for the Stones – and was familiar with the 13-page manual explaining the necessary procedure – recently left town. Norman shrugs this off as a minor inconvenience. “We’ll find someone else,” he says.

In any case, the couple have bigger issues on their mind. At their Napa Valley estate, where they also manage a vineyard, they are drilling below ground into the limestone to create a 5,000 sq ft cave of exhibition space. Also in the planning stages is a James Turrell skyspace which is being built into the swimming pool. Norah says when it is completed LED lighting will allow you to change the colour of the sky.

The Stones insist they always find solutions when they want to install a new work of art. Still, the “art cave” is perhaps an admission that their city home has finally reached full capacity.

San Francisco: Braced for the Big One [Financial Times]

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Financial Times, June 24 2006

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Tracey Taylor talks to San Franciscans
about day to day living on two
earthquake fault lines

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Scanning the newspaper on Friday to find out how your weekend plans will be affected by the weather is a common ritual wherever you live. If your home is in certain parts of California, you will also learn how many earthquakes occurred around you in the previous seven days. In the San Francisco Bay Area, in the week ending June 9, there were 69, the largest being one with a magnitude of 3.3 located near Talmage in Mendocino county. Any relatively strong one (above 3) would have caused residents to feel a sudden sharp jolt to their houses or an intense shudder in the ground beneath their feet.

Unfortunately, unlike forecasting the weather, predicting earthquakes is an inexact science, so your Friday paper will have no useful information about how many quakes to expect in the coming week. There will be many, but where, how large or how they may affect you is anyone’s guess. Welcome to life on the fault line.

San Francisco and its suburbs are situated on the San Andreas fault and its tributary the Hayward fault, which geological maps helpfully show running within half a mile of my home. My neighbours and I are literally living life on the edge and lately it’s been hard to forget it.

April 18 marked the 100th anniversary of the “Big One”, the 1906 earthquake that, combined with the fire that raged in its wake, all but destroyed San Francisco and left at least 3,000 dead. In the run-up to the centennial, the media ran stories for weeks. There were numerous commemorative exhibitions and events and, on the day itself, a reported 10,000 people, many dressed up in bonnets and breeches, converged in the city centre at 5.12am to remember the moment the earthquake struck.

Considered one of the US’s worst natural disasters, the 1906 quake had a magnitude of 7.9. Its epicentre was two miles offshore but its impact was much more far-ranging as it ripped the earth’s surface for 300 miles along the San Andreas fault at speeds of up to 13,000mph. In that year’s May 5 edition of Collier’s, Jack London wrote: “Not in history has a modern imperial city been so completely destroyed. San Francisco is gone. Nothing remains of it but memories and a fringe of dwelling-houses on its outskirts. Its industrial section is wiped out. Its business section is wiped out. Its social and residential section is wiped out. The factories and warehouses, the great stores and newspaper buildings, the hotels and the palaces of the nabobs, are all gone.”

Response to the ”big one” was swift, however. Reconstruction was largely completed by 1915, in time for the Panama-Pacific Exposition, which celebrated the city’s “rise from the ashes”.

The next big quake in the Bay Area was in 1989. The 7.1-magnitude Loma Prieta killed 66 people, injured more than 3,700 and caused extensive destruction. Forty-two of the deaths occurred when a double-decker portion of a freeway “pancaked” and crushed several cars on the lower deck. A section of the Bay Bridge, the main artery between the East Bay and San Francisco, also collapsed.

As for the next one, the US Geological Survey says there is a 62 per cent chance of a damaging earthquake of magnitude 6.7 or higher striking the Bay Area within the next 30 years. The Hayward fault is most likely to snap. Severe quakes have happened on this fault every 151 years, give or take 23 years, meaning it is now into the danger zone. As USGS seismologist Tom Brocher has said: “It is locked and loaded and ready to fire at any time.”

So how prepared is the Bay Area and the people who live in it? Officially the region is as ready as it ever has been. Billions of dollars have been spent over the past decade to upgrade water, transportation, communications and emergency response systems. But there are still deficiencies. Since Loma Prieta, all the Bay Area’s freeway overpasses have been seismically hardened and all but two of its eight major bridges have been sufficiently upgraded, including the Golden Gate. Yet the Bay Bridge, the most crucial span of all, has not been protected, nor have parts of the area’s main public transit system, the BART Transbay system.

Guidance on “earthquake preparedness” for the local population is readily available, if not always adhered to. Most homes, unless they were built in the past 20 years or so, need to be seismically retrofitted, a three-step process which has the effect of “tying the house together”: you bolt the house to the foundation, add plywood to brace the walls, then use special hardware to attach those walls to the floor framing above them. Retrofitting costs range from $3,000 to $30,000 according to the vulnerability of the home.

People are urged to have a disaster plan that includes agreeing where to meet family members after an earthquake. And everyone is advised to be ready to survive on their own without power, water and food for three days. This means keeping full emergency supplies in your home: water, food, first-aid kit, tools, blankets and important family documents. Yet a poll in March this year showed that, although seven out of 10 Californians believed a big earthquake would strike the state and affect them, only 22 per cent felt they were well prepared for an such an event.

People’s attitudes to living in earthquake country vary widely. Some, such as Oakland Hills resident Preston Parsons, live in a permanent state of mild anxiety. “I think about the possibility several times a day,” she says. But, like many of the area’s residents, she doesn’t have earthquake insurance because it’s too expensive. She was given a quote of $5,000 a year. Others, such as Berkeley resident Steve Lomprey, say they don’t give earthquakes a second thought; he cheerfully admits to being “in total denial”.

Mark Burget, whose job as the director a large charity brought him from Colorado to San Francisco a year ago, is less sanguine: “You are more aware than the average person of the possibility of dying unexpectedly at any given moment,” he says. Burget thinks about an earthquake striking when he’s sitting in traffic under a big bridge span or when his family is split up in different parts of the area. He also has a theory that the underlying threat explains the reputation San Franciscans have for being so fun-loving. “It’s why San Francisco is such a vibrant city,” he says. “People are more inclined to live life with abandon.”

Ralph Keyes, author of Chancing It: Why We Take Risks , goes as far as to say that some people positively enjoy living with risk: “There is definitely a thrill to living in earthquake country – as well as hurricane country, flood country, brushfire country and tornado country,” he says

As for me, I’m following in the footsteps of a friend, Mike Wilson, who, after more than 20 years of feeling anxious about how much better prepared he and his family should be for an earthquake, finally took a four-hour window of opportunity from work last month to go to a discount store and buy every disaster supply he could get his hands on. “It’s a huge weight of my mind. Like buying life insurance. I feel better every day,” he says. This month my sons’ school held a silent auction and I had my eye on just one prize: the fully stocked emergency supplies kit. I was prepared to bid high, as high as it took, to buy this potential peace of mind. And, I’m pleased to say, I won it.