Let me tell you about the time I impersonated Elijah

Let me tell you about the time I accidentally impersonated the prophet Elijah.

I suppose I ought to preface my story by noting — even at the risk of sounding like I’m saying, “Some of my best friends are Jewish” — that I hope I’m not offending anyone with this story. I have nothing but the utmost respect for people who practice any religion with sincerity, as well as those who practice no religion with the same conviction. I’m in a giving mood — so people who aren’t sure, I respect you too.

Anyway, when I was in college a friend invited me to a seder dinner at her house. I accepted, but the dinner was to take place on the night I got back to school after spending spring break with my family in San Francisco. I had a ride back to school with another friend, but traffic was worse than expected and we were very late.

When I arrived at the home of my friend who was hosting the seder, I walked up to the front door, a bottle of wine in each hand, and noticed the door was slightly ajar. I had never been to a seder before, so I had no idea that (at least in my friend’s seder tradition) this was to be expected.

I could hear people talking inside, so as I pushed the door open wide I said, “Hi, everybody, sorry I’m late!”

Much to my surprise, the dozen or so people sitting around the dining room table were already facing the door. They had just started the portion of the seder known as the Cup of Elijah the Prophet, and were looking to the door because they were talking about the tradition that Elijah visits each home on seder night. Everyone’s eyes widened as I walked through the doorway, and some people just sat there with their mouths open.

Finally, someone picked up his glass of wine, raised it up, and shouted, “Elijah!”

Everybody else shouted, “Elijah!” too, and burst out laughing. I had no idea what was going on.

My friend got up from the head of the table, still laughing so hard she could hardly stand, and showed me to my seat as she explained what I had done.

To this day, I have never had such good timing as that night I walked in the door so late.

Contra Costa Times ignores District 10 candidate

I guess it’s never too early to write the end of a story, never mind that you don’t know what’s going to happen in the middle and don’t remember to include all the characters. At least, that’s the tack the Contra Costa Times seems to have taken with its coverage of the District 10 race for Congress.

I’m not going to get deeply into East Bay politics when my bailiwick really is San Francisco (and the Peninsula). And I’ve never endorsed or donated to any candidate for any office — I don’t even tell my wife how I vote — so I’m not going to start now. But I do know that newspapers shouldn’t be in the business of deciding which serious candidates for office they should tell readers about, which is why it’s disappointing that the Times seems to think that even though the contest to replace Democratic Rep. Ellen Tauscher is “crowded,” it’s OK to ignore the bid of Adriel Hampton, who’s mounting a grassroots campaign for the office.

Hampton doesn’t have the endorsement of Tauscher or Rep. George Miller of Martinez. He isn’t doing the traditional fundraising that goes with a campaign for Congress. He’s got his work cut out for him, and he knows it.

But he’s also smart and dedicated, fiercely passionate about good government that serves the people, and savvy at building community through good ideas and new technologies. I know this about Adriel Hampton because I used to work with him at the San Francisco Examiner, and I’ve followed his blog and his tweets about the role of government in society and the role of technology in government. So take my opinion with as many grains of salt as you think are appropriate, but I know I wouldn’t count him out of any contest.

I don’t agree with everything Hampton thinks. Take, for instance, his stand on religion and pharmacists, which is dead wrong: His platform, as posted online, says he “would not force pharmacists to violate their religious faiths to work at state hospitals.” Pharmacists should be free to follow their conscience, sure — to another line of work. Nobody forced them to be pharmacists and nobody forced them to take jobs that involve state funding. Don’t want to get involved with dispensing certain medications? Fine, you don’t have to. There is a wide variety of other careers where your religion and your job won’t be in conflict. Choose one.

But Hampton is a serious candidate and he deserves serious coverage from the media in his district. District 10 voters, for their part, deserve to hear about candidates other than just the successor anointed by the muckety-mucks of the Democratic Party.

For the record, Hampton did pitch me the idea of writing something about his campaign when he saw that the reporting on the contest wasn’t presenting all the candidates: As the San Francisco Chronicle recently noted, he is looking beyond the mainstream media to generate publicity for his District 10 bid. He’s a friend and former colleage, so I listened. If he had been off base, I would have told him so. But when he was political editor of the San Francisco Examiner, Hampton went out his way to include a broad range of candidates in the discussion because it was the right thing to do (as editor of the San Francisco Independent, the Examiner’s sister paper, I took part in the San Francisco Board of Supervisors District 6 endorsement meetings, so I remember it was a *very* broad range — Oy). He deserves the same treatment now. Report on his poll numbers, report on his platform, give an opinion, but don’t pretend he’s not even there.