Serendipity

Serendipity. I've always loved the word and the phenomenon it describes — "the faculty of making happy chance finds," according to the unassailable Chambers.

Serendipity — my chance find, or someone else's chance find that somehow involves me — has operated forcefully in my life. And it occurred just the other day, when an old "Clarkie" friend from Berkeley called me because my name had serendipitously come up in conversation with a colleague of hers, who turned out to be another old friend. I'd lost touch with both these brave people. And now I'm back in touch with both of them.

It was Sherry Reson who called. A longtime Democratic activist in the Bay Area, she's now Director of Development for the Rockridge Institute. And Glenn Smith is a Senior Fellow of the Institute.

Glenn is probably best known as the author of The Politics of Deceit (foreword by the late and very great Molly Ivins), "a compelling indictment of the Bush Administration's cynical, anti-democratic manipulation of the media." You can read his full bio and his articles either at The Huffington Post, or at the Rockridge website. When you look at his full bio and dip into his articles, you will quickly understand why he is one of my heroes.

This serendipitous convergence means that I will be doing something with Rockridge here in Santa Barbara, and that both Sherry and Glenn will be visiting us soon.

Stay tuned!