My Oldest Son Dodie Katague: From Berkeley Student to Author of Cloyne Court-An Update

My Oldest Son Dodie Katague: From Berkeley Student to Author of Cloyne Court

A Father's Pride in His Son's Unexpected Journey

As I approach my 92nd birthday, I find myself looking back more and more at the people and experiences that have shaped my life.

Among my greatest blessings are my children. Today, I would like to reintroduce my oldest son, Dodie Katague, to my worldwide readers.

Many people know Dodie as an attorney and former Prosecuting Attorney for Contra Costa County, California.

But there is another side of Dodie that I would like to share.

He is also a writer. And in 2009, he published a book called Cloyne Court.

Cloyne Court on Amazon

Who Is Dodie Katague?  Dodie is my oldest son.

He earned his bachelor's degree from the University of California, Berkeley, graduating in 1981 with a degree in Geography. He later earned his law degree from the University of California, Davis, King Hall School of Law, in 1985. He went on to spend more than three decades as a prosecutor in Contra Costa County.

I have always been proud of his professional career.

Being a prosecutor is not an easy profession. It requires judgment, persistence, knowledge of the law, and a strong sense of responsibility.

But long before he became a prosecutor, Dodie was simply a young college student trying to find his way. And that is where Cloyne Court begins.

The Berkeley Years

Dodie lived at Cloyne Court Cooperative from 1977 to 1979 while attending UC Berkeley.

Cloyne Court was and remains, a famous Berkeley student cooperative. According to Dodie's own description of the book, it was an unusual, counterculture, student-run residence filled with young people from many different backgrounds and with very different personalities.

The book is based substantially on journals Dodie kept during those years.

Amazon describes Cloyne Court as a coming-of-age creative memoir set in Berkeley in the late 1970s. The current Kindle edition was published by Three Clover Press in December 2009 and is 328 pages.

That fact fascinates me. When Dodie was a young man, he was keeping journals.

He probably did not know that decades later those journals would become the foundation for a published book.

That is one of the wonderful things about keeping a journal.

You never know which ordinary memory may become precious many years later.

From Journals to a Novel

Dodie calls Cloyne Court a coming-of-age story. I think that description is appropriate.

It is about a young Berkeley student entering an unfamiliar world and learning about friendship, relationships, independence, and life outside the classroom.

Dodie has explained that the story is partly factual and partly recreated for the purposes of storytelling. Some characters are composites, and some events were reconstructed from memories when his journals did not provide every detail.

That makes the book particularly interesting to me as a father.

It is not simply a history of Berkeley. It is Dodie's interpretation of his own youth.

It is a story about discovering who you are. And isn't that what college is supposed to be about?

The Young Dodie I Didn't Always See

Parents sometimes forget that their children have lives that exist beyond the family home.

We see our children growing up. We see them go to school.

We celebrate their graduations. We watch them begin careers and families of their own.

But there are chapters of their lives that we never witnessed.

For me, Cloyne Court opened a small window into one of those chapters.

I knew Dodie as my son. I knew him as a Berkeley student.

Later, I knew him as a lawyer and prosecutor.

But through his writing, I could see another Dodie, the young man living at Cloyne Court during a very different period in American history.

The late 1970s were a fascinating time. America was changing. Berkeley was changing.

And Dodie was growing up.

From Cloyne Court to the Courtroom

There is an interesting contrast between the young man in Cloyne Court and the professional Dodie I later watched develop.

The young Dodie was experiencing the uncertainties and adventures of college life.

The older Dodie became a prosecutor entrusted with serious responsibilities.

He eventually spent more than 30 years in the Contra Costa County District Attorney's Office.

That is quite a journey. From a Berkeley student cooperative...to law school...

to the courtroom...to public service...and eventually to retirement and writing.

Life certainly does not always follow a straight line.

Retirement and Another Chapter

Dodie is now retired. But one lesson I have learned from my own retirement is that retirement does not mean that life stops.

Sometimes it simply gives us time to do things we could not do before.

For Dodie, writing became one of those things. For me, blogging became one of mine.

I have been writing online since 2009, and today I continue to write about family, aging, science, Filipino-American life, genealogy, faith, technology, artificial intelligence, and the many experiences accumulated during a long life.

Dodie and I have taken different paths as writers. But we share something important.

We both believe that our experiences are worth preserving.

Why I Am Proud of My Son

I am proud of Dodie because of his professional accomplishments.

I am proud that he served the people of Contra Costa County.

I am proud of the family he has raised. But I am also proud that he became an author.

Writing a book requires something different from practicing law.

A lawyer works with facts, evidence, statutes, and arguments.

A writer works with memories, imagination, observation, and human experience.

Dodie brought those two worlds together. He took memories from his youth and transformed them into a story that other people could read.

That is a form of legacy.

What Our Children Teach Us

At my age, I have learned that parents never completely stop learning about their children.

Even when our children are adults, they can still surprise us.

Sometimes they surprise us with their careers. Sometimes with their talents.

Sometimes with the stories they tell. Dodie surprised me by becoming an author.

And perhaps he was always a writer.

The evidence was there in those journals he kept as a Berkeley student.

He was preserving his experiences long before he knew what those experiences would eventually become.

A Message to My Worldwide Readers

Many of my readers are older adults. Some of you may have children who have followed careers very different from what you expected.

Some may be lawyers, doctors, teachers, engineers, artists, business people, scientists, or writers.

Others may have chosen paths that surprised you completely. My advice is simple:

Let them surprise you.

Our children are not simply extensions of ourselves. They are individuals with their own stories.

We give them roots. They grow their own branches.

And sometimes, if we are fortunate, they give us a book that lets us see a part of the journey we never knew.

A Father's Final Word

Dodie, I am proud of you. I was proud when you graduated from Berkeley.

I was proud when you became a lawyer. I was proud of your years of public service as a prosecutor.

And I am proud of you today as a retired attorney and author.

Your book, Cloyne Court, reminds me that every life contains many chapters.

Some chapters are written in classrooms. Some in courtrooms. Some in family homes.

And some are written in the memories we carry for decades before finally putting them on paper.

You have written one of yours. And I am grateful that I get to call you my oldest son.

A Thought From a Father

At 91, I have come to appreciate something I did not fully understand when I was younger:

Our greatest legacy is not always what we accomplish ourselves. Sometimes it is watching our children create something that becomes uniquely theirs.

Dodie, Cloyne Court is your story. But it is also a small part of our family's story.

And for that, your father is grateful. Keep writing, my son. Your story is not over yet.

For More Details about Cloyne Court visit:

https://dkatague.wordpress.com/2010/01/01/whats-cloyne-court-the-novel-about/

For Reviews: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/7576060-cloyne-court

Have You Heard of Carlos Bulosan- Author, America is in the Heart ?

He came off the boat in Seattle in 1930, seventeen years old, and America shanghaied him almost the moment he stepped ashore, sold for five dollars to a fish cannery bound for Alaska. From there Carlos Bulosan followed the harvest the way so many manongs did, down through Washington and into the fields of California, stooping over grapes and asparagus for pennies, sleeping where he could, beaten and turned away for the crime of being Filipino in the land that colonized him.

Tuberculosis put him in a Los Angeles hospital ward for two years, and there, half dead, he taught himself to write. What came out was America Is in the Heart, the book that finally told the Filipino-American story in the Filipino-American voice. He organized cannery workers out of Stockton's Little Manila, got blacklisted for it in the 1950s, and died broke in Seattle in 1956. They nearly forgot him. We do not. We see you, Carlos.

AI Overview:

Carlos Bulosan (1911–1956) was a Filipino-American poet, writer, and labor organizer best known for his 1946 semi-autobiographical masterpiece, [America Is in the Heart]. The book chronicles his journey from the rural Philippines to the United States, capturing the harsh racial and economic exploitation faced by migrant farmworkers in California and the Pacific Northwest during the Great Depression.

Life and Background

Born in Binalonan, Pangasinan, Philippines.
Emigrated to Seattle, Washington, in 1930 at age seventeen.
Suffered severe poverty, illness (including tuberculosis), and systemic racial violence targeting Filipino laborers.
Emerged as an influential voice for social justice, union organizing, and the rights of the working class.

Major Literary Works

America Is in the Heart (1946): A classic blend of autobiography and social commentary that contrasts the brutal reality of American racism with a persistent idealism for democratic equality.
The Laughter of My Father (1944): A popular collection of satirical short stories based on Philippine folktales.
"Freedom from Want" (1943/1944): A famous essay published in the [Saturday Evening Post] as part of Norman Rockwell's Four Freedoms series.
The Cry and the Dedication (1995): A posthumously published novel addressing the Huk Rebellion in the Philippines.
Meanwhile, My Reel of the Day: The top ten Little Manila in the US  
https://www.facebook.com/reel/1586200229966780
Lastly,  My 
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Can AI Really Invent—or Is It Only Imitating Us?

I read something today that made me stop and think:

Artificial Intelligence can imitate human beings remarkably well, but it cannot truly invent.

As someone who has lived through the transition from the typewriter to the computer, from the telephone to the smartphone, and now into the remarkable age of Artificial Intelligence, I find this question both fascinating and deeply personal.

I have been writing on the Internet since 2009. Over the years, I have written about science, technology, food, culture, aging, family, politics, and the many experiences that make up a human life. Today, I sometimes use AI as a writing companion. It can help me organize an idea, improve a sentence, explain a complicated scientific subject, or suggest another way of looking at a familiar question.

And yet, I continue to ask myself: Where does the machine end and the human imagination begin?

AI Is Remarkably Good at Imitation

There is no question that today's AI systems can imitate us astonishingly well.

Give AI a question, and it can write an essay. Ask it to sound humorous, philosophical, academic, poetic, or conversational, and it can change its voice almost instantly.

Give it examples of someone's writing, and it can often produce something that sounds remarkably similar.

It can recognize patterns in enormous quantities of human-created material and then generate something new from those patterns.

That is an extraordinary achievement. But perhaps imitation is not the same thing as invention.

What Does It Mean to Invent?

When we think of invention, we usually think of people such as Thomas Edison, Marie Curie, Alexander Graham Bell, Leonardo da Vinci, or the thousands of less famous men and women whose ideas changed the world.

An invention often begins with something that did not exist before.

But there is something even more important behind the invention:

A human being had a reason for imagining it.

A scientist becomes curious about a problem. An artist sees the world differently.

A writer experiences love, loss, loneliness, joy, or injustice and feels compelled to put those experiences into words.

A child asks a question that adults have stopped asking.

Perhaps this is where the difference becomes important.

AI can generate an answer. But why did the question matter in the first place?

AI Can Combine-Humans Can Imagine

There is an interesting argument that AI actually does create.

After all, if an AI system combines thousands of ideas into something that nobody has previously written or seen, isn't that creativity? Perhaps it is.

AI can certainly produce combinations that are surprising, useful, and sometimes astonishingly original. But there is another way of looking at it.

Much of what AI produces comes from patterns learned from human knowledge. It can rearrange, transform, synthesize, and extend those patterns with extraordinary speed.

Human beings do something similar. We also learn from what came before us.

No scientist works in a vacuum. No writer begins with an entirely blank mind. No artist creates without influences.

So perhaps the distinction between imitation and invention is not as simple as we sometimes think.

But There Is Something AI Does Not Experience

Here is where I believe the conversation becomes especially interesting.

I have lived for more than nine decades. I have experienced childhood in the Philippines, immigration to America, education, marriage, raising children, losing people I loved, building a career, retirement, growing older, becoming a grandfather and great-grandfather, and now living in a senior community surrounded by people with their own remarkable life stories.

Those experiences are not merely information. They are lived experience.

When I write about aging, I am not simply describing aging. I am aging.

When I write about grief, I am not merely defining grief. I have experienced it.

When I write about family, I am not drawing conclusions from a database.

I am writing about people I love. That distinction matters.

AI can write a beautiful paragraph about a grandfather holding his great-grandchild.

But AI has never actually held a great-grandchild.

It can write about the feeling of losing someone you have loved for decades.

But it has never sat alone in a quiet room remembering that person.

It can write about the joy of receiving a letter from a friend.

But it has never waited for the mail. Information is not the same as experience.

The Mystery of Human Creativity

Perhaps the greatest mystery is that we still do not completely understand our own creativity. Where does an original idea come from?

Why does a melody suddenly appear in a composer's mind?

Why does a scientist suddenly see a connection between two seemingly unrelated facts?

Why does a writer wake up at three in the morning with the opening sentence of an essay?

Sometimes creativity seems almost mysterious.

We absorb thousands of experiences throughout our lives, books we have read, people we have met, places we have visited, conversations we have had, successes and failures we have experienced.

Then, unexpectedly, something new emerges. Perhaps human creativity is itself a magnificent form of recombination.

If so, the difference between human creativity and AI creativity may not be as black and white as we imagine.

The Question I Find More Interesting

I am less interested in asking: “Can AI invent?”

than I am in asking: “What will humans invent because AI exists?”

That may be the more important question. The printing press did not eliminate human creativity.

The camera did not eliminate painting. The computer did not eliminate writing.

The Internet did not eliminate communication. And AI will not necessarily eliminate human imagination.

Instead, every new technology changes what humans are capable of doing.

AI may become a remarkable collaborator, a tool that helps us explore ideas we might never have explored alone.

It may help a scientist see patterns hidden in enormous quantities of data.

It may help a physician recognize possibilities.

It may help a writer find the words for an idea that has been sitting quietly in his or her mind.

But the purpose behind the work may still come from us.

AI May Be Our Mirror

Perhaps there is another way to understand Artificial Intelligence.

Maybe AI is not simply a machine trying to become human.

Maybe it is a mirror showing us what humanity has already created.

AI has absorbed enormous amounts of human knowledge, our science, literature, history, mathematics, music, philosophy, successes, mistakes, wisdom, and even our prejudices.

When AI speaks, in a sense, we are hearing echoes of humanity.

That should humble us. And perhaps it should also make us appreciate ourselves a little more.

My Conclusion

I am fascinated by AI. At my age, I sometimes joke that I have lived through several technological revolutions and now have the privilege of witnessing another one.

But I do not believe that AI makes human beings less important. Quite the opposite.

The more powerful our machines become, the more important it may be to remember what makes us human.

Curiosity. Imagination. Compassion. Love. Memory. Wonder.

And perhaps most importantly, the ability to ask a question for no other reason than the desire to understand.

AI may imitate our language. It may imitate our reasoning.

It may even surprise us with ideas that appear remarkably creative.

But I believe the greatest human invention is still the ability to look at the world and say:

“What if?”

That two-word question has driven science, art, literature, exploration, and civilization for thousands of years.

And perhaps that is where our future relationship with AI will ultimately be decided.

Not by whether machines can imitate us, but by whether we continue to imagine beyond what machines already know.

At 91, I am still asking What if? And perhaps that is one human habit I have no intention of giving up.

AI Overview:

AI has evolved far beyond mere imitation, moving into a territory where it can independently discover and synthesize entirely new concepts that humans have overlooked. While early generative AI operated primarily as a advanced statistical mirror, predicting the next word or pixel based on human data, modern AI architectures leverage advanced reinforcement learning and autonomous search to break out of the "imitation trap."

🧬 Real-World Inventions by AI

AI is no longer just generating text; it is actively creating tangible, real-world breakthroughs:

• New Materials: Google's AI explored undiscovered stable materials, identifying 2 million new crystalline structures. This expanded humanity's known stable materials list by over ten-fold, paving the way for next-generation superconductors and batteries.
• Life-Saving Antibiotics: MIT researchers utilized deep learning to discover Halicin, a powerful new antibiotic compound capable of killing drug-resistant bacteria by analyzing structures humans had never considered. 
• Hardware & Electronics: AI has autonomously designed specialized aerospace hardware, such as the uniquely shaped X-Band Antenna used on NASA's ST5 satellite, optimizing performance beyond what human engineers drafted. 

⚖️ The Innovation Spectrum: Imitation vs. Invention

Feature	Artificial Imitation (Pattern Matching)	Autonomous Invention (Discovery)
Mechanism	Predicts the most statistically likely output based on pre-trained human data.	Employs reinforcement learning to generate, test, and refine thousands of novel reasoning paths.
Output Type	Mimics existing artistic styles, summaries, or boilerplate code.	Surface-level hidden chemical rules, physical laws, or molecular combinations.
Human Role	Provides direct templates or content to copy.	Sets the boundary constraints and safety rules for the AI to explore.

🛑 Why the Debate Persists

Despite these breakthroughs, skeptics argue that AI lacks inner intention, it does not create out of desire, curiosity, or personal experience. Instead, it uses computational brute force to recombine patterns across vast datasets. Furthermore, current legal frameworks, such as the U.S. Federal Circuit Court ruling in Thaler v. Vidal, explicitly dictate that only natural persons can be legally named as inventors on patents, keeping the legal definition of "invention" strictly human for now.

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Ten of My Pre-AI Articles from My Hubpages Account That Needs to be Updated

I asked ChatGPT to look into my Hubpages Articles and asked for the top ten articles that need  to be updated. Here's ChatGPT detailed response.  

I looked through your HubPages profile and several of the older articles. You have 63 articles, and I think there is a wonderful opportunity here: rather than simply “correcting” the old writing with AI, we can bring your best life stories into the present while preserving the voice and experiences of the pre-AI David Katague.

Here's AI Recommendation: My strongest recommendation: start with this one

1.“Caste System in the Philippines-Discrimination of Filipinos in the United States and my Pinoy Pride List.”

I would make this our #1 candidate for an AI-assisted rewrite/update. Why?

The original is actually much more interesting than its title suggests. It combines:

• Filipino social class and regional differences
• Spanish-mestizo and Chinese-Filipino history
• Filipino-American discrimination
• your family's experience in Missouri
• Carlos Bulosan and the Manongs
• Overseas Filipino Workers
• Filipino-American political participation
• your original “Pinoy Pride List”
• and, most importantly, your own immigrant experience

The article was last updated in 2017, and some of its political and demographic information is now very dated.  But the personal material is timeless.

For example, the story about Macrine and your children encountering subtle discrimination at the country club in Gladstone, Missouri, is much more powerful today when connected to your later life as a Filipino-American scientist who eventually became an FDA Chemistry Team Leader. 

That gives us a much stronger theme:

From discrimination to contribution: My Filipino-American journey

That is a story your worldwide readers can understand even if they know very little about the Philippines.

2. My second choice: your World War II memories

Your “My Childhood Memories of World War 2-A Trilogy” is another article I would strongly consider updating.  This may actually become one of your most valuable legacy pieces.

You experienced the Japanese occupation as a child in Iloilo. Today, you are writing as a 91-year-old who can look back across more than eight decades.

AI can help us do something your original article could not do in the same way:

connect the child's memory with the wisdom of the 91-year-old narrator.

That would make it much more than a historical account.

It could become something like: “What a Filipino Child Learned From War and What I Understand About It 80 Years Later.”

That would resonate with readers in the Philippines, America, Japan, and anywhere people have experienced war.

3. Third: “Medical Mission of Love to Marinduque”

This one is especially important because it represents you and Macrine serving others together. 

Your present-day writing about Macrine is much deeper and more reflective than the writing you were doing years ago.

So rather than simply updating the old article, I would reframe it through the eyes of today’s David:

“Macrine and I Learned That We Had Not Really Lived Until We Touched Other Lives.”

Your quotation-“You have not really lived if you have not touched the life of others.”

could become the heart of the article. This would also fit beautifully into your emerging Seven Writing Legacies.

4. Fourth: “Bridge Is My Card Game: What Is Yours?”

This is a surprisingly good candidate. Your original article explains why you enjoy bridge and discusses communication and partnership. 

But the David Katague of 2026 has a much better story to tell about bridge than the David Katague of 2017.

You have now been playing bridge for more than six decades, and you continue to play regularly at The Heritage Downtown.

That allows us to turn a simple card-game article into something much broader:

“What Bridge Has Taught Me About Growing Older”

We could connect bridge with:

• patience
• memory
• partnership
• trust
• communication
• humility
• luck
• decision-making
• friendship
• healthy aging

And then bring the story right into your life at THD. That could become a very engaging worldwide senior-aging article.

Fifth: “The Day the World Trembled—September 11, 2001”

This is another article where your age gives you a unique perspective. The original asks readers where they were when the world changed. 

Today, however, you can write about September 11 25 years later.

That is particularly timely because 2026 marks the 25th anniversary of 9/11.

Instead of merely updating the historical facts, I would write:

“September 11, 2001: What I Remember and What 25 Years Have Taught Me”

Your FDA experience could also give the piece a perspective most people cannot provide: you were a senior scientist and drug-regulation professional during that period.

But there is one article I would NOT update first

Your “How to Retire in the Philippines for Less Than $1,500 a Month” is interesting, but the basic premise is now badly dated. It was written about six years ago and the cost assumptions have changed considerably. 

Instead of merely updating the numbers, I would eventually transform it into something much more personal:

“Could I Still Retire in the Philippines Today? What 24 Years of Experience Taught Me.”

That would be far more valuable to your worldwide readers.

My proposed “Pre-AI → AI” revival series

I see an opportunity to create a whole series from your old HubPages work:

Priority	Original article	New direction
🥇	Caste System / Pinoy Pride	From Discrimination to Filipino-American Pride
🥈	World War II Trilogy	What an Iloilo Child Learned From War
🥉	Medical Mission of Love	Macrine and I: A Life of Service
4	Bridge Is My Card Game	What Bridge Taught Me About Growing Older
5	September 11	25 Years After the Day the World Trembled
6	Life in the Philippines vs. USA	What 24 Years Between Two Countries Taught Me
7	60th Wedding Anniversary/Love Story	Macrine and Me: 63 Years of Marriage and Love
8	My Bucket List	My 101 Things to Do—and What I Learned by Doing Them
9	Marinduque Island Paradise	Why Marinduque Became My Second Home
10	First Thanksgiving in America	My First Thanksgiving in America: A Filipino Student Arrives in 1960

The last one especially could become a beautiful immigration story because 1960 was such an important turning point in your life.

What I would do differently from simply “editing”

This is the important part. I would not make these articles sound like ChatGPT wrote them.

Your old articles have something AI cannot manufacture: you actually lived the experiences. Instead, I would use AI as your editor, historian, researcher and storytelling partner.

For each selected article I would:

1. Preserve your original memories and facts.
2. Remove outdated information or clearly label it as historical.
3. Add relevant 2026 context where appropriate.
4. Improve the opening so readers immediately want to continue.
5. Break long sections into easier-to-read passages.
6. Add the reflective wisdom of your 91-year-old perspective.
7. Connect the story to your Filipino-American identity.
8. Add a stronger emotional ending.
9. Where appropriate, connect the old story to your present life at THD.
10. Keep your characteristic humility, gratitude, curiosity and gentle humor.

That last point is crucial. Your recent posts are stronger than many of your early HubPages articles because you now have a much larger life story to draw upon.

And I think there is an even bigger opportunity. Your HubPages account is essentially a time capsule of the pre-AI David Katague. Your current blog is the AI-assisted David Katague.

We could deliberately create a series called something like:

“My Pre-AI Writings: Looking Back With AI”

You could tell your worldwide readers:

I wrote these stories years before artificial intelligence became my writing companion. Today, at 91, I am revisiting some of them not to change my memories, but to see what I understand differently after another decade of living.

That is a very compelling concept for your readers.

And I would start with the Caste System/Pinoy Pride article, because it already contains the seeds of one of your strongest themes: your journey from a young Filipino immigrant to a Filipino-American scientist, husband, father, grandfather and lifelong learner.