Remembering Chad

From the moment they met each other in 1984 during the first week of freshmen year at Bishop O'Dowd High School, Patrick Scalise knew he and Chad Newhouse were going to be best friends for life.

"He was, as we say in Oakland, 'hella cool,'" says Patrick. "He was one of a kind: stubborn, handsome, eccentric, a perfectionist, loving, sensitive, funny – he was the wittiest person I ever met in my life - and stoic. Maybe too stoic, as it turned out."

They shared a deep love of sports and heavy metal music, and you never met two bigger Raiders and A's fans in your life.

Their friendship continued through college and life in the adult world. When they weren't playing together in an AC/DC cover band, they were keeping in touch every day through phone calls and emails.

But a few years ago Chad started to withdraw into himself, and months would go by before Patrick heard from him.

"He was so dark and isolated. That's one of the signs of depression, but I didn't know it. I'll never live that down."

Then, in the early morning hours of Dec. 2, 2012, Patrick got a phone call from Chad's father. Chad had taken his own life.

Patrick was devastated, and he (wrongly) blamed himself.

"I keep asking 'What if?' You look at this situation and say, 'This guy needs serious help.' But you don't realize that you might have to intervene physically. You don't think it will come to that."

In despair, he traveled to L.A., where he and Chad had many mutual friends, and they drowned their sorrows in hours and hours of playing the music Chad loved.

"Then one our friends said, 'How rad would it be if we created a Raider Nation rock band and played a concert in Chad's honor?'"

They formed an all-star band called The Plunketts, and Patrick created a non-profit called the Chad Newhouse Foundation to promote suicide prevention and mental health awareness.

 "It went from friends trying to heal through music to this silly name to something extremely serious that gives us a purpose."

The first annual Plunkett Fest, a benefit for the Chad Newhouse Foundation, will be held Oct. 18 at the Uptown Nightclub in Oakland, featuring The Plunkets, The Butlers, and Feather Witch.

Former Raiders Cliff Branch and George Beuhler will be there, along with some of the Raiderettes. Tickets are available on Ticket Web or at the door. All proceeds will be donated to San Francisco Suicide Prevention.

And if you can't make the show, you can still send a check to the Chad Newhouse Foundation, 1308 63^rd Street, Suite P, Emeryville 94608.

"Suicide is such a taboo subject," says Patrick, who still misses his friend every day. "Look how far we've come with AIDS. We got over that B.S. We have to do the same thing with mental health."

If you are having suicidal thoughts yourself, call the National Suicide Hotline ASAP at 1-800-273-8255. It's open 24/7, and the person on the other end will be someone who's been there, too.

And if you know someone who is wrestling with suicidal thoughts, please don't assume they won't act on it. They will, if nobody intervenes.

"My best friend committed suicide," says Patrick. "It could happen to you, too."

Run Rabbi, Run Rabbi, Run, Run, Run

And now, in honor of the High Holy Days, an update on the Runnin' Rabbi himself, Yehuda Ferris, who, along with his wife Miriam, is co-director of Chabad of the East Bay in Berkeley.

Chabad is the center of local Hassidic life, which means there's always a lot of singing, dancing, joking and, above all, smiling.

Hassidim are followers of a rabbi who lived almost 300 years ago known as the Ba'al Shem Tov (Master of the Good Name).

He taught that a personal relationship with God is more important than book learning. He called that relationship "cleaving to God;" and for his followers, it's an ecstatic, joyful experience.

"Even something as simple as tying your shoelaces or changing your baby's diaper can bring you closer to God, if it's done in the right spirit," says Ferris. "If you stop and think about all the blessings The Lord has given us, it's just overwhelming. All you can do is laugh and sing and dance with gratitude and joy."

So what's Ferris' latest hobby? Running Marathons. He began with his first half-Marathon (13.1 miles) at the San Francisco Marathon on July 27.

"My son-in-law goaded me into it. He said, 'Old man, you're going to run the Marathon' and made me buy a pair of good running shoes. When I put them on I started to feel like a big shot. Ninety percent of running is looking the part.

"Then he bought me an Assics shirt that wicks away the sweat and some spandex pants that looked obscene. So I got myself some running pants that were loose and breathable."

His plan was to get up early each morning and run progressively longer distances for the next three months.

"I started telling people I was in training, but I really wasn't. So one day my wife kicked me out of bed and said, "Go run!" So I jumped into Lake Temescal for a mikvah (ritual bath) – and began training in earnest."

The Marathon was held on a Sunday; so rather than drive on the Sabbath, Ferris and his congregation checked in en masse at the San Francisco Holiday Inn on Friday night and held Sabbath services there.

He was up bright and early on Sunday for his starting time, 5:30 a.m. He was running to raise money for San Francisco Team Friendship, a cause dear to his heart that matches special needs kids with non-disabled teenagers with only one goal in mind: friendship.

"They have everything – therapists, educational pedagogues – but they don't have as many friends as they would like," he says. "So we provide the teens to give them the friendship and socialization that every person craves."

Ferris wore his running gear, plus his yarmulke and tallit (prayer shawl), of course.

"My favorite moment was when another runner jogged over to me and said, 'Excuse me, are you Jewish?'" he laughs.

But he was far from the most picturesque runner in the race.

"I saw a fireman in full uniform and a guy who juggled all the way, but this wasn't Bay To Breakers. People were wearing clothes."

He didn't win the race, of course, but he did finish.

"I got the Crown of a Good Name," he says. "I got street cred."

To find out more about Team Friendship, visit sf.teamfriendship.org.

Carry That Weight

When Bobby Kennedy was murdered in 1968, a conservative Republican, Charles Goodell, was appointed to his Senate seat. But Goodell was a conservative with a conscience, and that conscience wouldn't let him support the Vietnam War, much to the displeasure of President Richard Nixon.

So the Nixon people went after him with a vengeance. They ran William F. Buckley's brother James against him, and Goodell was defeated for re-election.

He lost his Senate seat, but for the rest of his life he had the consolation of being able to look in the mirror every morning and seeing a man with integrity staring back.

I wish his son, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, could do the same. Given the opportunity to do the right thing in the Ray Rice case, he punted.

First, he interviewed the victim with her accused attacker sitting right next to her, something all those high-priced former FBI agents on the NFL payroll could have told him was a no-no. Then he chose to believe Rice's self-serving story and let him off with a mere two-game suspension, just a week after he banned Cleveland Browns wide receiver Josh Gordon an entire year for smoking pot!

Goodell made it clear what his priority is: public relations - or, as they put it in NFL-speak, "protecting the shield."

Now that a second video has surfaced showing Rice delivering the actual knockout punch, he's been suspended "indefinitely," which means he can apply for reinstatement after a year.

But why did Goodell need to see that second video when he'd already seen the first one showing Rice dragging her unconscious body out of the elevator? How did he think she lost consciousness?

Domestic violence in the NFL is nothing new. Carolina Panthers defensive end Greg Hardy has been playing for three months after his conviction for beating his girlfriend and threatening to kill her. 49er defensive end Ray McDonald is still playing after being arrested last month for beating up his pregnant girlfriend. And last Friday Vikings running back Adrian Peterson was arrested for beating his 4-year-old son about the genitals with a tree branch.

Two years ago, Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher killed his girlfriend. In 1999 Carolina wide receiver Rae Carruth killed a woman who was eight months pregnant with his child. And, of course, don't forget O.J.

But Roger Goodell doesn't think violence against women is a problem.

Well, I have news for him: It is, and not just in the NFL. It's widespread throughout our society - in the military, in police departments and on college campuses, where sexual assaults are routinely covered up by the chain of command.

It's open season on women, and it has to stop. But it won't until men stop it themselves. We all need to be like the students at Columbia.

A few months ago, a Columbia senior named Emma Sulkowitz was raped by another student, and the university did nothing about it. So she's been protesting by dragging the mattress on which she was raped around campus with her.

Last Saturday hundreds of her fellow students showed up at an anti sexual assault rally, and all of them were toting mattresses, along with signs reading, "Carry that weight."

And that's what we have to do, too. Carry that weight.

Words Of Love

In 1999 a group of neighbors in north Berkeley held a block meeting and decided to create a traffic island at the intersection of several busy streets – Sonoma, Hopkins and Josephine, just behind the North Berkeley branch library - to create a safe passage for pedestrians and a well-marked route for cars.

But a year later, on Sept. 11, 2001, the traffic island, which was still under construction, took on new meaning after the terrorist attacks. That day, somebody posted a sign in the triangular space: "MEET HERE AT 8:00 TONIGHT."

And they did. Few words were spoken; few were necessary. And they kept gathering there evening after evening.

Then somebody planted three saplings - one at each corner of the triangle - connected them with clotheslines, and set out blank squares of paper to be used for notes and clothespins to attach them to the lines.

And so the writing began. Young people and old, families, kids on their way home from school, and even whole classrooms read the messages and wrote their own. Eventually, the triangle took on an almost festive appearance, with the colored squares fluttering on the clotheslines. But the atmosphere was always somber and reflective.

As autumn turned to winter, the neighbors took down the notes, now numbering more than 1,200. One neighbor, former City Councilwoman Mim Hawley, volunteered to store them in her closet.

Ten years later she pulled them out and read them, and she was bowled over, both by the emotions they expressed and the emotions they evoked in her. So she compiled a representative sample - about 280 - into an album.

Some express a hope for peace:

"Please…help me understand and learn to forgive."

"Pray for an outcome worthy of all the lives that were lost."

"Someday, when they tell the stories of how the world came to live in harmony on this beautiful earth, may they count 9/11/2001 as the beginning. May it be so."

Others are angry:

"Bomb the hell out of the bastards who did this."

"Let's not let our spirit of love and tolerance interfere with our basic need to eliminate our enemies."

"Remember the people whose last choice in life was to die by fire or jump 90 stories. UNITE to destroy their murderers."

But the most heartbreaking messages, as you might expect, come from children:

"I hope the people that died in the airplane crashes will come back to life. I wish a fairy will come and do her magic."

"I hope this never happened and never again will. By Emma age 9."

"In our hearts we know right from wrong, but sometimes our mind doesn't listen. Molly Rose, age 9."

"Dear people who died, I miss you."

And one person left this heartfelt message: "I have never believed in you, God, but now we need you. Please come."

The album will be unveiled at a neighborhood meeting at the North Branch library at 10 a.m. on Sept. 13, and it will stay there, next to the checkout desk, for a month.

Then it will move to the main library downtown and placed in its permanent home in the library's History Room.

And someday, some PhD student at Cal who is writing a dissertation about grassroots reactions to 9/11 will be very, very grateful.

Thw Burning of Washington

(Above: the original Star Spangled Banner, the flag that Francis Scott Key saw by the dawn's early light flying above Fort McHenry in Baltimore harbor, now on display at the Smithsonian)

Two hundred years ago today, 5,000 battle-hardened British troops captured Washington D.C. and burned all the public buildings down.

They started with the Capitol, which housed the Supreme Court and the Library of Congress, as well as the House and Senate. For kindling, they used the books in the Library of Congress, all 3,000 of them, as well as irreplaceable works of art.

Then they marched to the White House and burned that down, too. The next day, they torched the State Department, Treasury Department and War Department.

It was a sorry incident in a war that never should have been fought. The cause of the war was the British navy's practice of replenishing its ranks by stopping American ships and kidnapping some of the sailors.

Naturally, Americans resented this, and on June 18, 1812, Congress declared war.

What they didn't know was that the British cabinet, which already had its hands full fighting Napoleon, had banned the offending practice three weeks before. But it took six weeks for ships to cross the Atlantic, and by the time the news arrived here the killing had already started.

And it went on for almost three years. The final clash was the Battle of New Orleans on January 18, 1815, a resounding American victory.

But once again, what nobody knew was that the war had already been over for three weeks. The previous Christmas Eve, British and American diplomats met in Ghent, Belgium, and signed a peace treaty that returned everything to the way it was before. But the news didn't reach our shores until after the fighting at New Orleans was history.

And for this thousands of people died?

The War of 1812 wasn't our only dumb war. Most of them were – the Mexican War, the Spanish-American War, Vietnam, Iraq, and, of course, the Indian Wars – all of which created greater problems than they solved.

Then, of course, there was World War I, a four-year meat grinder that killed 16 million people and accomplished absolutely nothing – except causing World War II, which chewed up another 100 million lives.

World War I actually ended on November 9, 1918, but the cease-fire didn't go into effect for another two days. The generals delayed it until 11 a.m on November 11 so the war would end at the 11^th hour on the 11^th day of the 11^th month. How cool is that?

So they kept feeding men into the meat grinder, ordering attacks until the very last moment. And thousands more died. All for a public relations stunt.

Look, I'm no pacifist. There are times when we really do have to fight – World War II, for example. But one of the best reasons for remembering history is to learn from it. Some of the lessons are positive ones of courage and devotion to duty. But others are cautionary tales about war's unintended consequences, most of them bad.

We are currently observing anniversaries of three important wars in our history – the 200^th of the War of 1812, the 150^th of the Civil War, and the 100^th of World War I.

Or rather, we aren't observing them. There has been barely a word, from either our politicians or the media. And Santayana was right: Those who forget their history are condemned to repeat it.

O Captain, My Captain

A few years ago I went to my college reunion, and the university offered some special faculty lectures for the occasion. My favorite one was titled "What Made Mozart A Genius?"

The lecturer, a professor in both the med school and the music department, deconstructed Mozart's thought processes to show how they are different from the way you and I think.

For instance, Mozart is famous for his skill in playing with musical phrases. He loved to take a melody and run it through all the variations:  forward, backward, inside out, in a minor key, in a major key, and on and on.

The professor told us Mozart loved to do the same thing with language, too, effortlessly slipping from a Viennese accent to a Bavarian accent to a Berlin accent to a Hamburg accent, and so on.

Then he said, "Who in our own time does that remind you of?"

Nothing but blank stares. He looked incredulously at us and said, "Robin Williams, of course!

So if you want to know how Williams' mind worked, it worked like Mozart's. And, in his own way, he was a great artist, too.

Everyone has his/her favorite Robin Williams moment, but I have two.

The first was his moving portrayal of a melancholy Russian immigrant in "Moscow On The Hudson," an extraordinary display of restraint, especially for an actor who was famous for being over the top.

The second came at the 1985 Academy Awards, when emcees Jane Fonda and Alan Alda announced, "There are so many people around the world watching that we're calling on the linguistic services of our co-host, Mr. Robin Williams."

They sent greetings to China, India and France – which were receiving a live Oscar telecast for the first time – while Williams "translated" the words into their respective languages.

Then Fonda gave a "special hello" to the Philippines, which had just kicked out dictator Ferdinand Marcos and his shoe-hoarding wife, Imelda.

Williams' translation: "Come on down! Some of these shoes have never been worn! Check it out!"

Only he would have the wit to think of that joke. Or the chutzpah to pull it off.

There will never be another even remotely like him, alas.

It's so sad that in the end, he couldn't see himself the way so many people who loved him saw him – or be open to the possibility that they might be right.

But that's depression for you. It's a nasty, insidious disease that causes you to isolate yourself just when you need other people's support the most.

I know. I've been depressed all my life. That's a hard thing to admit, especially when depression still has such a stigma. (On the day Williams died, a Fox News host said he was "such a coward" for killing himself.)

But I think it would be a good start for all of us who struggle with depression to come out of the closet. So I am.

If you are having suicidal thoughts yourself, please call the National Suicide Hotline at 1-800-273-8255. It's open 24/7, and the person on the other end will be someone who's been there, too.

And if you know someone who is wrestling with suicidal thoughts, don't assume they won't act on it. Get involved. Show them that you care.

The Right Way And The Wrong Way To Help Animals

In 1922, two brothers who had immigrated from Greece, Nick and Jim Pappas, founded the Star Grocery on Claremont Avenue.

It quickly became one of Berkeley's most beloved businesses. During the Great Depression the Pappas brothers extended credit to hundreds of families who otherwise wouldn't have been able to afford food and wrote off thousands of dollars of unpaid bills.

In 1974 the business passed to Jim's son Nick. It's a terrific store and a pillar of the community, a place were the local high school kids have traditionally gotten their first jobs.

But in the early morning of Sunday, August 27, somebody smashed the plate glass windows in front.

Within hours, an organization in Florida called "Bite Back," which claims to support animal rights, posted pictures of the broken windows on its website, along with a manifesto from someone zcalling himself "veganarchist lone wolf," who says he did it because Star Grocery sells meat.

Never mind that all of Star Grocery's beef, pork and chicken comes from animals that roam free instead of being cooped up like sardines on feedlots or in cages that are too small for them to turn around. Or that they eat their natural diets - real grass and grains - instead of chemicals and leftover animal parts.

"Cage free, organic, murder is murder and death is death," he says piously.

Well, maybe. But I have one question: Dude, do you really think smashing the windows of a mom & pop store made converts for the cause?

To the contrary, the neighbors are hopping mad. Not at Star Grocery, at you.

"Who the hell does he think he is to come into our city and hurt our store?" said one woman. Several people said they plan to patronize Star Grocery even more, just to show you they can't be pushed around.

Nice going, dude. I just hope people won't assume all animal rights activists are like you.

                                     * * *

In happier news, congratulations to Tony La Russa for his well-deserved induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame on July 27. But I think future generations will remember him even more as the man who made it cool to be kind to animals.

Instead of using his celebrity to make money, he used it to raise consciousness. And as founder and co-director (with his wife, Elaine) of the Animal Rescue Foundation - ARF, for short – he has saved 8,824 cats and dogs to date, and still counting.

I don't remember the first time I met Tony, but I sure remember the second time. His first words to me were "How's your baby?" I didn't understand what he was talking about for a moment, but then I realized it was my cat, Eliza. I thought, "This guy really gets it!"

The next time I saw Tony, he and Elaine, along with their daughters Devon and Bianca, were in Walnut Creek picketing a store that was selling animal furs.

Out came the store owner, who unleashed a stream of profanities - right in front of the girls, who were both less than 10!

"You blankety-blanks!" he said. "You can blankety-blank my blankety-blank, and you can also – wow, you're Tony La Russa! Hey, Tony, sign this baseball for me, willya?"

Tony dutifully signed.