My children attended the fabulously underfunded, crappy El Cerrito High School in the mid/late 1990s. The school may have been a wasteland academically, but there were some bright lights especially in the theater department and the debate team. Thanks to a few amazing teachers (Mr. and Mrs. Berman and Mr. Anderson to name the big ones in our lives) more than a few of the kids that were in those classes appear to be heading on to true fame and success in the arts. How cool is that?

Jacob Steingroot is a film editor in New York City now and one of his film's is being shown at the Sundance Film Festival right now. Everything's Cool is a documentary about global warming. Amazing. Jacob and my daughter, Briana Miller, have been very close ever since 8th and 6th grade respectively. They used to do art projects downstairs in my house (one of my favorites being a reconceptualized old computer monitor, which became a time continuum from the Jurassic to 2080) and now Jacob is up for an award at Sundance and she is a published cartoonist and comic artist.

Josh Costello founded Impact Theater in Berkeley and has directed plays all over the country. My son, Lucas Benjaminh Krech (lucaskrech ), is a lighting designer in New York City. There are others from that two or three year span at ECHS who are also on the way. I'd love to name them all (okay: Ashkon Davaron and Becky White are two of the others who are in motion) but enough's enough. You get the picture and then some. I don't quite understand what was in the water that decade (or maybe the one in which these kids were conceived) but I think this is a pretty amazing art cluster.

What can I say? If I am spelling it correctly, I'd say this is what naches is.