If there is an emerging genetic underclass, I could run for class president or class clown. Read more in ![Fog at Isle Royale [Source: wildmengoneborneo.com]](../wp-content/uploads/2008/04/isle_royale_fog.jpg "Fog at Isle Royale [Source: wildmengoneborneo.com]")
"Brendan, this is what the world looks like all the time to me. Just a little fog. It’s a fine day for boating on the Great Lakes.” Without missing a stroke he turned to dart a skeptical glance at me. Brendan the Navigator. When we named him I didn’t tell his mother everything the legendary Irish name implied. But I imagined him taking on the role of navigator for me. Growing up with Coastal Survey charts and tales of Great Lakes shipwrecks, he came to know Superior as another home. He never doubted the wisdom of canoeing there with a father who was half blind. 
![Charlotte Casiraghi in a red dress. [Source: Stylophile]](../wp-content/uploads/2008/02/charlotte_casiraghi_red_dress.jpg "Charlotte Casiraghi in a red dress. [Source: Stylophile]")
When I figured out who Charlotte Casiraghi was, I realized that I once sent a poem to her mother. 
The legendary Kiki of Montparnasse posed for Man Ray’s 
![Eugène Delacroix. Liberty Leading the People. 1830. Louvre, Paris. [Source: Wikimedia Commons]]](../wp-content/uploads/2008/05/delacroix_liberty_1830_2.jpg "Eugène Delacroix. Liberty Leading the People. 1830. Louvre, Paris. [Source: Wikimedia Commons]]")
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August 9, 2023 at 8:23pm
by Mark Willis On the day I called my sister and she said her daughter’s baby died, just two days old, I held a bronze Buddha in my hands. Cast by monks in Thailand, the shopkeeper said, just $400. If you really like it, maybe I can do a little better. Around the corner an art dealer dimmed the lights so I could see shadows cross the world’s finest paper castings. The work is like a novel, he said, the more you read into it, the more you see. So I climbed Nob Hill to find a cold wind and lucid sky above the fog-carpet bay. I decided to err on the side of love, that day at least, giving something to every person who asked. How will it help you? I trusted every answer. On Powell Street a woman stuck in a psychotic stutter said for the thousandth time that day, looking at no one, I don’t care, I don’t want to hear it. In Union Square a skinhead and his girlfriend engaged the pigeons. She had bread crumbs. He had a stick. Hey, they don’t like my hair cut, he said as the birds rose as one flock, arced around the statue, landed again at their feet. She doled out crumbs. Watch this, he said, running into the flock, booting the slowest pigeon sideways so he could pound it to silence on the pavement. Hey, how’d you like someone to beat your head in with a stick? You’re small, kid, very small. Then why don’t you do something about it? he said. Only you could make yourself bigger. I guarantee you, his girlfriend shouted as I walked away, he’s done all the growing he’ll ever do!
About the image: Golden Gate Bridge in fog, San Francisco [Photo by M Skaffari/Flickr]
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