The pastel parlor of Leatherby's is a timeless Sacramento classic. It's an old establishment, though not as historic as Vic's (est. 1947), but Vic's was a place for childhood memories--crisp chips, sandwich-like hot dogs and afternoon sundaes at the counter or in a cozy booth. Leatherby's was a sign of something different. It was bigger and brighter, the Rydell High carnival of my grade school and teenage days. Leatherby's was where we went for cast parties and where we went after choir performances. In high school, it was where we went before or after dances and dates. The best part about Frosh/Soph in '06 was watching Steph guzzle down the remains of a Black and Tan as we rushed to catch our ride to the dance. Anytime you went to Leatherby's, someone from school would be working there or you'd run into someone you knew because--hell, everyone ended up at Leatherby's.

And it was fun. It didn't matter if you were in the mood for ice cream or not. It didn't matter if you didn't even like ice cream. You could get fries or sorbet or milkshakes (oh, Swiss Milk Chocolate...) or you could just sit there and laugh with your friends because nobody goes to Leatherby's to be serious or "grown up." Even in our twenties, we always end up at Leatherby's to laugh and to hold hands and to hug and to exist in a place frozen in time.

But it doesn't feel frozen in the sense that it's stuck. It feels like a place that preserves a part of us that lays dormant in us wherever we go: that sense of adventure and fun that gets buried over time as we learn to be practical and serious. That's the beauty of a taste of familiarity--but it's only a taste I want or really need, I think. I need just enough to truly miss it when I'm gone again.


I think this is what being back in Sacramento this past month and a half has been for me: a place to remember how it felt before so much of life happened. I don't wish to go back to those ignorant days, but there's a feeling that accompanied that time that I do miss, though I know I'll never truly be without the soulmates who created that world with me. Like my philosophy notes told me: "We grow in the bad shit. But you need to know your own roots. People should shift mountains if they need to, but know where you come from."

The New York Times' Education section is currently focusing on the question of whether life beyond a bachelor's degree is beneficial or not. In a recent article by Laura Pappano, "The Master's as the New Bachelor's," the conclusion is that it isn't. Nowadays, it would seem that having a master's is the norm and the article notes that the number of master's awarded since 1980 have doubled.

A sociology class I took back in 2008 made note of this as well, though the discussions at the time were just musings: decades ago, it was enough to just graduate from high school; then it was just enough to have a bachelor's degree; soon, we'll all have to have more in order to be employable at even the lowest level. "In 20 years, you'll need a Ph.D. to be a janitor," says Richard K. Vedder, professor of economics at Ohio University, in Pappano's article.

There are two things about this that frustrates me the most: 1) the devaluing of high school (and therefore junior high/elementary school) education, and 2) the cost of obtaining a master's.

Issues in education are often overlooked, yet I think it's one of the most rampant problems in this country. We lose sight of the bigger picture, which is if we don't education our children, what kind of future are we hoping for? "Back when we valued a high school diploma, the quality of a high school education mattered," Cort pointed out last night at dinner. It's true, and is also what is happening to undergraduate education as well, I believe. What we seem to forget though is that it is these younger generations that will be running this country someday.

Which ties into my second point: soon, it will only be the wealthy who are able to obtain any sort of decent education. Schools are becoming factories, it seems. When I tutored at Orange High, I witnessed this firsthand: there are not enough teachers who actively care about their students. In Mr. Lake's classroom, it felt like he was just trying to move them along at the bare minimum. It didn't matter that some of these kids couldn't read and it wasn't as if there was any accountability. "Most of these kids won't have done the reading yet," Tim used to always say to us during our prep sessions. And it was true, because nobody held them accountable for their work.

Education is something politicians talk about valuing in this country, yet the funding does not exist for it anymore. Look at California, whose "three-tiered system of public universities" was once hailed as the crown jewel of the state--a recent study at CSU Sacramento laid out the hard facts: "The California that many like to think of as a leader in higher education is average at best and trending in the wrong direction. This troublesome performance is not for lack of commitment and effort by faculty and staff at California's colleges and universities. Rather, it reflects lack of coordinated attention by the state's policy leadership...the absence of vision and of proactive policy leadership can reduce investment in, and returns from, higher education and diminish prospects for an entire state." The study concludes, "California must, and can, do better."

Though in terms of the UC and CSU fee increases in the past month (which I'm inclined to comment on because of my own research), I think it's the fault of both the state and the Regents. While it's appalling that Governor Brown has cut, and is continuing to cut, so much from the funding for higher education, one of the main reasons must be the Regents' own poor decisions as well. I don't believe that the Regents have ever truly sought an alternative source of funding aside from raising fees. Almost immediately after the governor announced additional cuts, fees for the fall were raised by an additional 9.6% at UCs and an additional 12% at CSUs. These increases come just weeks away from the beginning of a new semester for CSUs. How is that fair?

"Prioritize my education" - a UCI protest, Nov. 24, 2009

I can see a rationale to cutting funding on the state's part. Lieutenant Governor Newsom opposed the fee increase at the last Regents meeting in which the 9.6% increase was approved. Maldonado did the same in his position last November when the initial 8% increase for this coming fall was approved. To me, this looks like a challenge from Sacramento as the turn the pressure around on the Regents, who have tried to redirect the pressure they've received from students. So now it's a stalemate: Sacramento is saying, "Use your money better. Fund what you're supposed to be funding, or find an alternative income because we're not going to take your frivolous spending (exorbitant increases in an attempt to keep top researchers at certain UCs; constant construction to expand due to over-enrollment)," while the Regents are saying, "Give us more money. Fulfill your promise to the students." I see both points and perspectives and I think the real purpose of the UC system is being forgotten about in all of this: to educate the students of California. By turning the focus on out-of-state and international students for the funding (and don't try to disguise this as a diversity issue, Regents, we know the fees are what is appealing to you) and by giving financial aid to non-citizens (sorry, but years of reporting on undocumented students have not changed my mind on this issue), we begin to ignore the mission that the UC system was founded on.

The CSUS study says that the Master Plan needs to be reclaimed, but I think we're far past trying to fix what's been broken since Reagan took office as governor of California. (Note: Jerry Brown's first run as governor came after Reagan, so he's used to having to clean up messes.) The Master Plan needs to be entirely rewritten if we want to make a realistic game plan for the future of education in this state. Unfortunately, I don't see that happening anytime soon.

It's really up to the individual to decide if a master's or Ph.D. is worth the cost. It seems it's a necessity, though there are jobs out there for those who choose not to go that route. That requires a huge effort on the individual's part early on though. I know that if I had not worked as insanely as I did at all of those jobs during my undergraduate years, I would be embarking on that master's path because I don't know where else I would go. It's regrettable on some levels because all I seemed to do was work in college and it exhausted me, but that's the cost I chose to pay.

Education will never be affordable, and that's the sad future we're looking at.

Day 24 of that "30-Day Letter Challenge" (I told you I was slow with it): "The person that gave you your favorite memory."

Bah. This is tough. I can't think of one favorite memory. My life has been made up of invaluable moments that I hold dear. I had this conversation recently with Alan recently about my "favorite college memory," and I don't think I have one. It was the same with leaving Loretto--I didn't have one favorite memory; I had many. Different things happened at different stages of my life that meant different things in those different moments. Does that make sense?

I was known as the photographer back in high school, documenting everything for everyone. "I'm afraid I'll forget it all someday," I said to someone once. When I look back at those photos now, I can barely remember some of those moments. In some photos, I remember the exact details of the minutes and seconds leading up to the shot; in others, I've forgotten why it was photo-worthy in the first place.

I guess if I were to think about it in a broader way, if I were to think about my "greatest hits" (as Lost would have it), I could think of things. There are moments that've meant a lot to me, though maybe they don't mean much to the person/people involved. There are memories I have that stand out to me, but I've always wondered to myself: how do other people feel about those moments too? Were they just as meaningful?

The obvious answer is: it doesn't matter. Whether the person who shared a day or evening with you remembers it as vividly as you do is moot because we all perceive moments differently. What's meaningful to you may not be meaningful to someone else, but the unique memory of it in your mind and the feelings it personally evoked are what make it special. It's how we classify favorites that others may not understand.

My favorite memory...

When Na and I were younger, Dad built a play structure for us out in the backyard. This was before our crazy neighbors moved in, back when "Uncle" Bill was living next door, and then Steve moved in after he left. It was when our lawn was fresh and we still had the apple pear tree. The combination of smells from those pears and our peach tree made spring and summer the most pleasant seasons of the year. It's in these seasons that the random patch of daffodils Dad could never figure out how to get rid of would bloom, and the zucchini in the garden would mutate into a giant after a week of too much Miracle-Gro.

On weekends, Na and I would sit on the plastic, banana yellow swings that hung side-by-side on the metal structure Dad put together one afternoon for Na's birthday. We would compete to see who could swing the highest. We would practice jumping off the swings, pretending like we were gymnasts trying to stick a perfect landing. We would sit on the swings and read our Animoprhs and Babysitter's Club books until the sprinklers would come on by accident and chase us away. We'd swing and swing, tilting our heads back to look at the bright blue sky and fight over whether the clouds were shaped like bunnies or dragons or pirate ships.

My childhood was spent in that backyard. Dad would barbecue on hot summer nights and we'd sit outside, eating our corn on the cob and enjoying the sunset. When night fell, we'd light tiki torches and lanterns and dance around the grass underneath the stars. We would jump up and down as airplanes flew over us, waving at the blinking light in the distance, pretending as if that blinking light meant the pilot could see us so far from the ground. After ice cream or fruits, Na and I would get back on those swings, and swing and swing as if it were daytime, but instead of imagining cloud shapes, we'd look for constellations.

And then we'd go to bed. Na and I would talk. Sometimes we'd listen to music, the volume on our boombox turned down real low so Mom couldn't hear. We'd listen to the crickets chipring in our backyard through the open screen from our bedroom. It was comfortable.

I took it for granted, because as the years passed and our neighborhood changed, we stopped going out to that backyard. The garden died. Dad got distracted and would forget to prune the trees. When the peaches fell, it become a chore to pick them up, and years would go by where we'd have no fresh fruit to share or enjoy. The play structure got rusty and the wooden benches I watched Dad build one afternoon rotted. And then we got busier and busier and nobody had the time or energy to take care of that backyard. We neglected it, and by the time we realized it, it was too late to fix it. So we just let it get worse.

Last winter break, I stepped outside to the backyard for the first time since leaving Sacramento--and I mean really stepped outside, because waffling near the side gate and poking at the plants is not the same. I walked outside to the patio where we used to have our barbecues and didn't recognize that backyard anymore. The grass was all dead. The Japanese maple was dulled. There was no more apple pear tree and the peach tree looked as if it would collapse under the weight of its branches. The backyard grew old, just like the rest of us as we age. But that's the wonderful thing about memories: those never grow old. And that's why I still remember exactly what it felt like to be a child in that yard. Despite what it is now and what we let it become, it will always be something I loved.

“Purple and silver day” was one of the best non-uniform days of my elementary school experience, because it wasn’t just a day to shed those polo shirts and plaid skirts; it was a day to celebrate our hometown pride: though the Sacramento Kings have long since fallen from their once-epic spotlight, their fans still remain some of the most loyal – and loudest (oh, the cowbells!) – of the NBA.

Yes, I will probably get shit for writing this nostalgic piece – hell, I get shit even now for still being a Kings fan.

“Don’t you mean the ‘Anaheim Royals’?” my snide, but well-meaning (I hope), colleagues ask.

It’s heartbreaking. I won’t even pretend to not be devastated by the Maloofs’ attempt to take the team south. Southern California already has two NBA teams … do they need a third? I think not. Lakers owner Jerry Buss thinks not. I’m certain they don’t. But it’s all about the money, I suppose and, unfortunately, the fans are always the ones who get jilted in these deals. Seattle Sonics fans: you know what I mean.

For a decade, despite my 300-mile move to southern California, I’ve remained a Kings fan. Through the glory, the frustrations and the heart-wrenching losses, I’ve stayed loyal to the team that began my love affair with basketball. My No. 16 Peja Stojakovic jersey still hangs in my old bedroom closet and there’s still a Kings poster of the ol’ “dream team” (Chris Webber, Mike Bibby, Doug Christie, Peja Stojakovic and Vlade Divac) on the wall; a Kings pennant hangs above my bedroom door and there’s still a t-shirt or two commemorating that 2002 Western Conference Finals series against the Lakers in a drawer … the mementos are scattered throughout my Sacramento home, and how could they not be? We were a Kings-loving family, like many Sactown residents.

The early 2000s were truly the golden years for the Kings. Their starters graced the cover of “Sports Illustrated” (the “dream team” pre-Bibby, when Jason Williams was still a King) and the team won its first playoff series in 20 years in 2001. The building momentum led to the now-infamous 2002 conference finals, which many young fans cite as the source of the Kings/Lakers rivalry that still has Kings fans hissing over biased calls (particularly now that Tim Donaghy’s confessions are out in print) and Lakers fans re-enacting Robert Horry’s Game 4-winning three-pointer at the buzzer (sigh!).

“We respected them, but the way we showed them the ultimate respect was by showing them no respect at all,” assistant Lakers coach Brian Shaw told them LA Times after last Wednesday’s win against the Kings to end their regular season.

As the decade wore on, the Kings slowly lost their momentum and by the time I left Sacramento in 2007, Head Coach Rick Adelman was gone, 4/5 of the “dream team” had been traded (and, even then, Bibby was gone barely two months into ’08) and their season ended with little fanfare. Coaching woes and player shenanigans caused Kings fans to shake their heads as their beloved team landed at the bottom of the standings by 2009, but it was no time to abandon ship. Say what you will, but Kings fans were nothing if not loyal.

And loud.

Lakers Head Coach Phil Jackson, who once called Sacramento a “cow town,” ignited a surge of trademark cowbells that would ring so loud during Kings games, there were rumors of banning the bells in outside arenas (particularly Staples Center). Those cowbells rival the annoyance of vuvuzelas, but fans never tired of them: they wanted to be loud, to shake the roof of Arco and let the country know how damn proud they were to have the Kings in Sacramento.

Because if there’s one thing Kings fans know, it’s that this unpredictable team could always pull out the strangest surprises – surprises that reminded fans why the team was once called “The Greatest Show on Court.” In December 2009, the Kings came back from a 35-point deficit against the Chicago Bulls, the biggest comeback in franchise history, and last December, Tyreke Evans made a game-winning shot from half-court at the buzzer to defeat the Memphis Grizzlies. Even in their final game against the Lakers last Wednesday, the Kings overcame a 20-point deficit in the fourth quarter that eventually led to a 116-108 loss in overtime, as well as an hour-long sit-in after the game by fans who wanted to show their love.

The Kings say a prayer with Derek Fisher, Lakers point  guard and National Basketball Players Association  president, after their Apr. 13 game.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty, as we all know,” longtime Kings announcer Grant Napear said at the end of last Wednesday’s loss, “but the one thing that we do know is the love affair between this team and this city, and tonight, we say so long…”

Uprooting the Kings is more than just a change of location. It’s taking away a team that gave the capitol city something to be excited about for 26 years, the longest time period the Kings have spent in one city – something that bonded us in that unique way that only sports can provide.

“Maybe the Maloofs don't feel the passion, but as an L.A.-based journalist, I traveled to Sacramento for the beginning,” wrote Ailene Voison of the Sacramento Bee. “I heard stories about cows in nearby pastures. I heard about a temporary arena and a second arena on the drawing board. I was introduced to a loud, loving, homespun crowd. The NBA still doesn't have many places like this.”

Soon, it will be gone: no more fourth quarter thrills. No more Slamson in his oversized Kings jersey, running around midtown Target during the holidays. No more retired No. 6 Kings jersey in honor of the fans. No more shops at the Sacramento International Airport packed with purple and silver. No more Grant Napear shouting, “If you don’t like that, you don’t like NBA basketball!”

Even if the move is rejected by the head of the NBA relocation committee (which is doubtful since the head is Clay Bennett, who okayed the move of the Sonics from Seattle) and even if the majority of the NBA’s 29 teams’ owners vote against it (several owners have already expressed skepticism), the Maloofs have said they’re not interested in selling the team, despite billionaire Ron Burkle’s bid to buy them. NBA Commissioner David Stern thinks that southern California can support three teams, but Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson (a former NBA point guard himself) isn’t giving in without a fight. The Maloofs have until May 2 to formally request approval to move the Kings.

Once again: these kinds of moves aren’t about the fans; it’s about money. Politics and arena-building arguments aside, it is more than likely that the Kings will no longer belong to Sacramento.

As heartbreaking as my love affair with the Kings have been at times, I think that’s the beauty of the narrative of sports: the ups, the downs, the jumping-out-of-your-seat-with-excitement feeling and the heartbreaking losses that bring tears to your eyes. It gives you something to invest in and it brings fans together as they cheer and cry in unison as their team’s season progresses.

And what’s the appeal of rooting for the Kings, a team that’s provided fans with more tears than cheers lately? As Michael Lewis wrote in “Moneyball,” his baseball narrative starring the Oakland A’s, “The pleasure of rooting for Goliath is that you can expect to win. The pleasure of rooting for David is that, while you don’t know what to expect, you stand at least a chance of being inspired.”

Arco Arena--I mean, the Power Balance Pavilion--empties out, one last time.

And it was inspiring – the wins, the losses, the fights to the finish – even until the end. We can’t always be a part of a team or organization or group that will never struggle, so if this is the last struggle for the Sacramento Kings, it’ll at least have been one for the books.