Starbucks, on Montgomery near Market

We know one another, but we don't know we don't know one another.

We are communicating, though silence is the coin of the realm.

We shape our tools and then our tools shape us. A button is easier to push than to say something face-to-face as was the custom in the nascent democracy.

Truth is now told in language we like to hear. And served with whipped cream and new CD's of popular musical genius wrapped in shiny cellophane.

In what poses as the dominant culture, it still comes down to the individual, you and me, sitting, sipping coffee in the late afternoon, sure that we know more than our mothers and fathers but not able to say what we know while looking one another in the eye.

And the warlords--ours and theirs--still go about doing what they want to do, saying one thing and doing another, as can be gleaned daily from the New York Times or any number of on-line sources.