Betsey Culp

It has been reported frequently that George W. Bush is concerned about his place in history. His worries are over. He’ll have one.

Bush will be remembered as the American president who dragged the rest of the world into an expensive and destabilizing “war against terror.” As the American president who fiddled as the globe heated up. And now, as the American president whose disregard for the sensible monitoring of his country’s financial practices is threatening economies all over the planet.

No, he didn’t do it all by himself. But in the United States, the buck stops on the desk in the Oval Office of the White House. It’s his deal.

Mao Zedong famously called the United States a paper tiger: “Outwardly a tiger, it is made of paper, unable to withstand the wind and the rain.” That was then, this is now.  International leaders today must believe that they hold a real, live tiger by the tail. Turn him loose, and they risk annihilation. All they can do is hold on tight, for dear life, and hope that he tires before he can do any more damage. But even his collapse is to be feared, for if he lands on them, he will destroy them.

End of rant. It needed to be said. But wiser minds than mine are busily trying to unravel the many-stranded economic mess we’ve allowed ourselves to get entangled in. I’ve said enough.

In fact, I’ve said all that I will be saying for the next several weeks. My old disease has come back, not dangerously so, but temporarily requiring huge doses of a medication that turns my brain into cornmeal mush. I feel like an anti-drug ad: “This is your brain. This is your brain on prednisone.”  The I Ching says, “In this case withdrawal is proper; it is the correct way to behave in order not to exhaust one’s forces.” But the I Ching also says, “Perseverance furthers.” I’ll be back.

Thanks for reading.

On the third planet from the sun, the following appeared in the New York Times on September 14:

In some sense, Ms. Palin has become a metaphor for Alaska itself, and as grand a landscape as Alaska is, the current discussion is less about a geographical location than about a state of mind, or states of mind.

Elsewhere, in a parallel universe, a group of men sat around a campfire, tired from riding the range all day. It was a scene familiar to American moviegoers, straight out of “Blazing Saddles.” A fierce wind blew down the prairie, stirring up little eddies of dry dirt. A coyote howled in the distance. Overhead, the stars shone a chilly light. The men shivered and drew closer to the fire. One of them spoke.

“Did you ever hear the story of how John McWayne rescued Sarah Paleface? It’s a true story. I heard it from McWayne himself. It was a cold night like this, and he was heading for camp after a hard day of Royal Mountie work. He was feeling kinda low, because he’d only captured three outlaws from sun-up to sun-down, far from the round dozen he usually sent off to the hoosegow.

“Because he was feeling kinda low, he wasn’t watching where he was going. He just let his horse take itself along the trail toward camp. Royal Mountie McWayne rode along, lost in thought, remembering the long-gone days when a man’s derring-do counted for something.

“Suddenly, from the other side of a row of bushes, he heard a voice. A woman’s voice.

“‘Help! Somebody help me!’ the voice said.

” McWayne sat up tall in his saddle and looked around. His sharp eyes were unable to pierce the dark. He turned his horse in the direction of the voice and rode slowly off the trail.

“‘Who’s there?’ he called softly, not wanting to stir up trouble if trouble was waiting beyond the bushes.

“‘Help!’ the voice said again. “It is I, Sarah Paleface.’

“Sarah Paleface! The fairest female in all the West! And she needed his help.

“McWayne squeezed past the bushes and found himself next to a train track. How could he have forgotten that the B&B Railroad had completed the line only the day before? The first train was due to roll through in just a few minutes.

“‘Sarah Paleface!’ he called. ‘I’ll help you. Where are you?’

“‘Down here.’

“Her sweet melodious voice was faint and fearful. What had happened to her? He looked down and saw, nearly under his horse’s feet, the lovely features of Sarah Paleface, peering up at him from a cocoon of white rope. She was tied firmly to the tracks.

“‘Who has done this dastardly deed to you?’ he shouted, as he leaped to the ground. ‘Never fear! John McWayne is here!’

“‘It was those dreadful B&B men,’ she sobbed. ‘They thought they could have their way with me because I’m just a home-loving girl from the West. But they soon found out that big-city bullies are no match for small-town virtue.’

“McWayne pulled out his trusty Bowie knife, shiny from years of use, and began to cut through the stout bonds holding her immobile. Sarah Paleface gazed up at him, her dark eyes filled with gratitude. The rope was thick. Precious minutes passed as he worked to free her.

“From far off in the distance came the faint whistle of a locomotive. McWayne doubled his efforts.

“The whistle grew louder. He could hear the roar of the engine as well. Sarah Paleface said nothing. She continued to look up at him calmly, her face showing the faith she placed in him.

“The train rounded a nearby bend and headed toward the figures on the track. McWayne worked his knife faster. And faster.

“With one last swipe, he cut through the bonds and pulled her loose. They tumbled backward into the bushes as the train roared past, showering them with heat and gravel. They were safe.

“Sarah Paleface sat up and brushed her wayward hair back from her forehead. ‘You saved my life,’ she said softly. And then she reached one soft pink hand, pulled his grizzled face toward her, and gently kissed his check.

“‘I can never properly thank you,’ she added. ‘But if you take me home, my father will reward you handsomely.’

“As John McWayne helped her to his waiting horse, he smiled. ‘Aw shucks, ma’am,’ he said. ‘It was the least I could do.

“Now ain’t that the greatest story?” the voice continued. “And don’t it make you proud to be a man of the West?”

The men around the campfire shuffled in their seats. Finally, one of them spoke up. “Ya know, boss, that ain’t quite the way I heard it. The way I heard it was like this… it wasn’t Sarah Paleface who was tied up on the railroad tracks. It was Royal Mountie McWayne. It was Sarah Paleface who saved his life.”

But that’s just one woman’s opinion. Thanks for reading.

Yesterday the fog lifted in the middle of the day, and I headed down to the Ballpark That Dare Not Speak Its Name to watch the Giants battle the Diamondbacks. It was perfect baseball weather, and the young San Francisco team was in fine fettle. (No photos — sorry! I took my camera, but my sieve-brain forgot to load the memory card.) Out in the bay a cluster of yellow kayaks swung through McCovey Cove and paused briefly, perhaps for old times’ sake. Tiny sailboats darted over the waves. The Empress Hornblower, looking like an old-time riverboat, stopped just outside the Arcade to give her passengers a glimpse inside.

Baseball is a colorful sport. Players in gray or white uniforms ran back and forth on a rich green field, set off by the brilliant blue of both bay and sky. Wind whipped the team pennants that line the stadium. And everywhere the stands were dotted with the orange shirts against a vast sea of empty dark green seats. Giants fans are fair-weather friends, and their team has been stumbling.

But next to me sat the prototypical Ginny the Giants Fan, a large, no-nonsense woman of an uncertain age. She wore a Giants cap, Giants earrings, a Giants T-shirt, and Giants socks. She also carried a Giants water bottle. As she watched the game, she recorded every play — every pitch — in her scorecard notebook. As she and her neighbor on the other side discussed the action in detail, she would occasionally pull out a copy of the day’s Chronicle or the 2008 Who’s Who in Baseball to check a fact. At the same time, her headset provided Kuiper & Krukow’s play-by-play account of what she was watching.

If you read this morning’s paper, you know what she saw. The Giants got a 2-1 lead in the third inning and held it until the ninth, when Arizona pulled ahead, 3-2. Bengie Molina (born in Puerto Rico) singled. Aaron Rowand (born in Oregon) walked. With two outs and two men on base, Eugenio Velez (born in the Dominican Republic) came up to the plate. A little tugboat painted red, white, and blue raced across the bay toward the ballpark, like the cavalry rushing toward a besieged fort. Strike one. Strike two. The tugboat disappeared behind the scoreboard.

Velez connected, sending the ball far out in center field. The runners scored. The diehards in the stands — all 12 of us — shouted, leapt to their feet, and hugged each other. The red, white, and blue tugboat reappeared on the other side of the scoreboard.

It was glorious, but…

There’s always a “but.”

But like every game on every other day, there was a seventh-inning stretch. Unlike other day, yesterday was the eve of 9/11, a date that baseball takes very seriously. The Giants had prepared for the occasion by mounting panels of shining fabric behind the statue of Willie Mays in front of the ballpark, imprinted with the names of the 3,000 people who were killed on that day seven years ago. A banner read, “We’ll Never Forget 9-11-01.”

To honor those who fell on that day, the Giants reverted to a custom that was common in 2001. They inserted another song into the seventh-inning stretch before “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.” The song, which was apparently chosen by baseball officials during the furor right after the attacks, was “God Bless America.” The featured singer was Kate Smith.

Kate Smith, whom the New York Times calls “the diva of American patriotism,” died in 1986. Four years before her death, when President Ronald Reagan joined Senator Jesse Helms in Raleigh, North Carolina, to present her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, he noted,

It’s been truly said that one of the most inspiring things that our GI’s in World War II in Europe and the Pacific, and later in Korea and Vietnam, ever heard was the voice of Kate Smith. The same is true for all of us.

But I think the citation for Kate’s Medal of Freedom — the highest civilian honor that our nation can bestow — says it all.

[At this point, the President read the citation, the text of which follows:]

The voice of Kate Smith is known and loved by millions of Americans, young and old. In war and peace, it has been an inspiration. Those simple but deeply moving words, “God bless America,” have taken on added meaning for all of us because of the way Kate Smith sang them. Thanks to her they have become a cherished part of all our lives, an undying reminder of the beauty, the courage and the heart of this great land of ours. In giving us a magnificent, selfless talent like Kate Smith, God has truly blessed America.

Her voice came to be seen as a lucky charm. In the 1960s and 1970s, The Philadelphia Flyers chose Smith’s rendition of “God Bless America” to open their hockey games.

It was up to Lou Schienfield to choose which games to play Kate. Generally it was a game by game decision — with Lou deciding on instinct or if the game was important. The first 3 years saw an incredible difference in the home records — 19-1-1 with Kate and a losing 31-38-28 record without Kate (including playoffs)

In gratitude, they erected a commemorative statue with an inscription that begins:

Blessed with a voice and presence which led her to stardom on Broadway, radio, and television, Miss Smith came to symbolize joyous, homespun, American patriotism.

This joyous, homespun, American patriot became the darling of American conservatives.

“God Bless America” was written by Irving Berlin during World War I but rarely if ever played until Kate Smith revived it in 1938 to mark the 20th anniversary of the end of World War I. The timing was right. As first Europe and then the United States headed into another war, listeners responded strongly to its patriotic message. Both the Republicans and the Democrats chose it to be sung at their national convention in 1940. There was even talk of making it our national anthem instead of the unsingable “Star-Spangled Banner.”

Times change, and so do people’s visions of their country. In the 1960s the military history of “God Bless America” began to make some people uncomfortable. Some suggested that “America the Beautiful” would be a more appropriate anthem, especially its final lines:

America! America! God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood, from sea to shining sea.

But in 2000, even before we entered the War on Terror, “God Bless America” returned to the scene. Richard K. Hayes, archivist of the Kate Smith Commemorative Society, recalls that it was sung

at the Republican national convention in Philadelphia July 31, 2000, the convention that nominated George W. Bush as our 43rd President. [There] a videotape of Kate [Smith] singing it on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1957 was played.

As the United States tried to re-create the mood of the Great Generation after 9/11, it was inevitable that the stentorian tones of Kate Smith would be heard throughout the “homeland,” asking that

God bless America, My home sweet home.

The message is clear: Forget the soft-and-fuzzy, hippie-dippie, summer-of-love sentiments of “America the Beautiful.” In times of war, the only brotherhood that counts is the bond between soldiers.

But that’s only one woman’s opinion. Thanks for reading.

Over Labor Day weekend, Slow Food came to San Francisco. That’s Slow Food, capitalized, as opposed to fast food, lowercased. Its arrival was preceded by a petition calling for a “New Vision for a 21st Century Food, Farm & Agricultural Policy,” which begins:

We, the undersigned, believe that a healthy food system is necessary to meet the urgent challenges of our time. Behind us stands a half-century of industrial food production, underwritten by cheap fossil fuels, abundant land and water resources, and a drive to maximize the global harvest of cheap calories. Ahead lie rising energy and food costs, a changing climate, declining water supplies, a growing population, and the paradox of widespread hunger and obesity.

Eric Schlosser describes the foodfest in this week’s Nation.

According to the Slow Food trinity, food must be “good, clean, and fair.” The “good” refers to taste; the “clean,” to local, organic, sustainable means of production; and “fair,” to a system committed to social justice.

Schlosser is impressed with the event, but not blown away.

It earned high marks for the good and the clean but next time could do a hell of a lot better with the fair. At the moment, the majority of Americans — ordinary working people, the poor, people of color — do not have a seat at this table. The movement for sustainable agriculture has to reckon with the simple fact that it will never be sustainable without these people. Indeed, without them it runs the risk of degenerating into a hedonistic narcissism for the few.

But one thing is obvious:

What had previously been considered a slogan — “slow food” — was now a genuine social movement.

“A genuine social movement.” Slow Food is serious business. Not much eating going on —even Schlosser

never made it into any of the taste pavilions at Slow Food Nation, where the ideal of “good” was amply represented.

But hard work and good intentions abound.

The original American foodie, M.F.K. Fisher, would have understood. She would have said it was all because of Queen Victoria. Yes, Her Most Gracious Majesty, By the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland Queen, Defender of the Faith, Empress of India. That Queen Victoria.

In an article published in 1974, Fisher describes the 19th-century development of what became the preferred mode of cooking in the United States. It apparently all began in 1846 when the queen’s chef published a book called The Modern Cook, and housewives on both sides of the Atlantic lined up to buy a copy. My Yankee mother would have been horrified to learn the origin of her cooking techniques, but they mirrored the ones adopted by these Victorian ladies. From the book, they learned to dine as Her Majesty did, with only two courses — entrée and dessert — instead of the multicourse dinners served on the decadent Continent. They chose simple sauces and used few spices, in contrast to France’ more imaginative cuisine. And in many American households, the specter of Carrie Nation joined Victoria and alcohol was banned, or at least banished to the husband’s study.

Apparently Victoria believed that “household management” was based on the stern curbing of all low animal instincts, so that kindly guidance away from them was both indicated and desirable.

In other words, food was serious business.

M.F.K. Fisher would have understood the Slow Food Movement, but I doubt that she would have joined its ranks. Her position on food was far from serious. New York Times reporter Molly O’Neill writes,

Her first book, Serve it Forth, published by Harper Brothers in 1937, took America by the shoulders and said, “Look, if you have to eat to live, you may as well enjoy it.”

And enjoy it, she did, passionately and sensuously.

Fisher, who would have turned 100 this year, is the current featured writer at the Book Club of California. Biographer Joan Reardon kicked off the exhibition Monday night with a slide show. Fisher’s books are on display in the club’s offices, surrounded by bookcases filled with other examples of fine bookmaking. But Reardon’s talk was held in a larger space usually occupied by the World Affairs Council. To get to it, members of the audience walked down a corridor lined with food — photographs from the book Hungry Planet: What the World Eats.

For M.F.K. Fisher, food was all about context. What you ate acquired meaning because of the occasion on which you ate it. Randall Tarpey-Schwed, a collector of Fisher books, recalled that in The Art of Eating she

described the “subtle, and voluptuous, and quite inexplicable” pleasure that she derived from eating sections of tangerine that had been warmed on a radiator until plump and then set out on an icy, snow-packed window sill. “I cannot tell you why they are so magical. Perhaps it is that little shell, thin as one layer of enamel on a Chinese bowl, that crackles so tinily, so ultimately under your teeth. Or the rush of cold pulp after it. Or the perfume. I cannot tell.”

In the reminiscence “A Thing Shared,” she tells of a trip she took with her father and sister when she was a little girl. They stopped for dinner.

I forget what we ate, except for the end of the meal. It was a big round peach pie, still warm from Old Mary’s oven and the ride over the desert. It was deep, with lots of juice, and bursting with ripe peaches picked that noon. Royal Albertas, Father said they were.

The pie was good, but the occasion made it extraordinary.

That night I not only saw my Father for the first time as a person…. I saw food as something beautiful to be shared with people instead of as a thrice-daily necessity.

The little girl’s realization remained with her throughout her life.

People ask me: Why do you write about food, and eating, and drinking? Why don’t you write about the struggle for power and security and about love, the way others do?

They ask it accusingly, as if I were somehow gross, unfaithful to the honor of my craft.

The easiest answer is to say that, like most other humans, I am hungry. But there is more than that. It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others. So it happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and the hunger for it… and then the warmth and richness and fine reality of hunger satisfied… and it is all one.

For Fisher, eating was like a love affair. Or good sex. It was also like good therapy. In How to Cook a Wolf, written during the Great Depression and on the eve of World War II, she says,

One of the most dignified ways… to reassert our dignity in the face of poverty and war’s fears and pains, is to nourish ourselves with all possible skill… and with our gastronomical growth will come, inevitably, knowledge and perception of a hundred other things, but mainly of ourselves.

Victoria must have turned over in her grave.

But that’s just one woman’s opinion. Thanks for reading.

[As always, click on a thumbnail image to see it more clearly.]

A headline in today’s San Francisco Chronicle reads

Shooting victim dies — another Mission fatality

That makes seven in the past three weeks.

Did you cringe when SFPD chief Heather Fong laid out the position of the police, and presumably of the City, at a press conference on September 5?

The violence in the Mission is unacceptable. People involved in gang and drug activity have no regard for the community.

Chronicle editorial writer Caille Millner did:

Right now, the ever-escalating chain of homicides that this city has suffered over the last several years proves that they simply don’t, and won’t — until it affects their own neighborhoods. Until then, they’ll be content to pawn the violence off on “gangs.” Until then, they’ll be content to believe that the neighborhoods where violence is happening is just what happens there — because people of color live there, because lower-income people live there, because because because.

Never mind that this part of the Mission has everything that generally helps to deter crime — tight-knit residents, supportive family units, locally owned businesses with a strong stake in the community.

Millner, a Mission resident, is angry. And despairing:

So the alternative is for San Franciscans to start living the way that many people in Oakland already do — with bars on the doors and a gun in the bedside table.

The center of the announced war zone is 24th Street between Mission and the freeway, where several of the recent shootings occurred. Until a few weeks ago, the street provided a lively, friendly focus for the entire neighborhood. It’s lined with small markets and shops that spill out onto the sidewalk. Inexpensive Latin American restaurants offer a haven to residents who live in crowded apartments nearby. There are a few nods to the area’s recent moves toward gentrification — several cafes have moved in, as well as a fitness center — but they maintain a quiet profile. On a sunny day, it’s a pleasure to walk there.

The street used to bustle in the evening as well, when daytime visitors were joined by a young, slightly trendier population.

Used to.

I came out of the 24th & Mission BART station last night and found that I’d entered a ghost town. As I walked along 24th to Bryant, I joined maybe 20 other pedestrians. Five were Asian women, most likely heading toward Mission from work at a late-closing nail salon. At least another five were plain-clothes cops. You can do the math. I had about a dozen blocks to walk, and it was very very lonely.

It felt like a scene from a science fiction film. The corridor was well lit, and the murals on walls and storefront shutters added accents of rich color to the night. A few cars drove by. One vibrated noisily, its bass amp turned way up. I saw one SFPD black & white. And a couple of lean lanky skateboarders, enjoying the traffic-free street. But in general, the street was silent. Inhospitable. Unfriendly. Barren.

Like a city depopulated by a neutron bomb.

Caille Millner may be right. But the disturbing question is, who drove the people from the street?

But that’s just one woman’s opinion. Thanks for reading.

Hey, guys! John McCain really did a number on you when he selected Sarah Palin as his running mate. And he’s been jerking your chains ever since. Why did you let John McCain jerk your chain last week? There’s been a whole lotta jerkin’ goin’ on. And y’all did a cute little dance in response, jumping up and down, back and forth.

I assume that Palin, like many other VP candidates, was chosen to act as party pit bull, leveling attacks at the opposition that might be considered unseemly coming out of the mouth of someone headed directly to the Oval Office. If so, she did a good job, and she did it with a certain kind of folksy panache. That’s what candidates are supposed to do.

But others saw her performance differently.

New York Times columnist Judith Warner’s chain was jerked in one direction:

Palin sounded, at times, like she was speaking a foreign language as she gave voice to the beautifully crafted words that had been prepared for her on Wednesday night.

But that wasn’t held against her. Thanks to the level of general esteem that greeted her ascent to the podium, it seems we’ve all got to celebrate the fact that America’s Hottest Governor (Princess of the Fur Rendezvous 1983, Miss Wasilla 1984) could speak at all.

Could there be a more thoroughgoing humiliation for America’s women?

Snap. Tammy Bruce was jerked in the other direction. Humiliation? Not at all, she wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle. Far from it.

For Democrats, she offers something even more compelling — a chance to vote for a someone who is her own woman, and who represents a party that, while we don’t agree on all the issues, at least respects women enough to take them seriously.

Whether we have a D, R or an “i for independent” after our names, women share a different life experience from men, and we bring that difference to the choices we make and the decisions we come to. Having a woman in the White House, and not as The Spouse, is a change whose time has come, despite the fact that some Democratic Party leaders have decided otherwise. But with the Palin nomination, maybe they’ll realize it’s not up to them any longer.

Clinton voters, in particular, have received a political wake-up call they never expected.

Snap again. In Salon, Joe Conason was yanked over to Judith Warner’s side:

It is hard to think of a more cynical and contemptuous political act this year than John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential running mate. Having served as governor of Alaska for less than two years — and as mayor of a small town before that — her qualifications for national office are minimal.

Palin is the epitome of tokenism, exactly what conservative Republicans have always claimed to scorn, until today, as the politics of quotas and political correctness. Even Rush Limbaugh is a feminazi now (at least until Election Day).

But if Palin’s résumé is limited, to put it politely, she possesses the only two qualities that McCain now seems to consider essential: She is a right-wing religious ideologue with female gender characteristics. Suddenly that is all anyone needs to qualify as a potential commander in chief of the world’s most powerful military.

It’s stories that jerk chains. And storytelling was out in full force last week.  Joan Walsh, writing in Salon, noticed it:

By the time Palin took the stage, she no longer seemed like an Alaskan Annie Oakley, a gun-toting, hockey mom biker-gal; she’d become pioneer victim girl, Pauline tied to the train tracks by mean Democrats and the liberal media. But Palin shook off the victim mantle by coming out swinging, first blasting “the pollsters and the pundits” for writing off McCain last year, then tearing into Barack Obama with glee, teeth bared like a Rudy Giuliani in heels.

A doctored photo in my email summed it up: Sarah Palin wearing an American-flag bikini and a big smile, stands beside a swimming pool, cradling a rifle.

In the past week, the world has turned the old Women’s Studies slogan on its head. The political has become the personal. Issues have become anecdotes. The war in Iraq was transformed into a woman’s oldest son, about to head into battle. Teenaged pregnancies turned into a photogenic 17 year old. Birth defects emerged as a beautiful five-month-old boy. Gun control was reduced to moose hunting. And so on. The technique worked well for Ronald Reagan. And it’s equally effective today.

It’s time to flip it back and resume the political debate. The only trouble is that the venerable slogan doesn’t want to stay upright. Sometimes the easiest way to talk about policies is in metaphorical terms. But people can always change the metaphors and thus reframe the discussion.

Take, for example, the most obvious feature of the GOP’s Palin lovefest, the sanctification of motherhood. We can point to the reasoned arguments of NARAL and Planned Parenthood. Or we can pull out a well-worn copy of The Handmaid’s Tale and begin reading:

A shape, red with white wings around the face, a shape like mine, a nondescript woman in red carrying a basket, comes along the brick sidewalk towards me. She reaches me and we peer at each other’s faces, looking down the white tunnels of cloth that enclose us. She is the right one.

“Blessed be the fruit,” she says to me, the accepted greeting among us.

“May the Lord open,” I answer, the accepted response.

But that’s just one woman’s opinion. Thanks for reading.

If you’re a traditionalist, you’ll pack away your white clothes on Monday night: as Labor Day comes to an end, so does summer. If you’re more of a traditionalist, you’ll head to the beach or a park for the last picnic of the season. But if you’re the biggest traditionalist of them all, you’ll march in a parade, carrying a banner or sign supporting organized labor.

We’ve done it as a nation since 1894. But labor commentator Dick Meister reminds us that — as in many other areas — San Francisco did it first. Says Meister:

It was on Feb. 21, 1868. Brass bands blared, flags, banners and torchlights waved high as more than 31000 union members marched proudly through the city’s downtown streets, led by shipyard workers and carpenters and men from dozens of other construction trades.

The marchers called it a jollification. The occasion was the passage of a state-wide law mandating an eight-hour work day. San Francisco had already passed its own law the previous December, covering all city employees. But even the city government had been dragging its heels compared to the private sector. Ever since the end of the Civil War, San Francisco trade unionists, always a feisty group, had been bringing an end to the customary ten-hour day in one field after another, using an astonishingly simple method. Workers’ organizations announced that after a certain date their members would work no more than eight hours a day, and that all subsequent contracts must include a clause to that effect. In an era marked by vigorous strikes, employers listened. As early as June 2, 1867, the Morning Call said,

The eight-hour system is more in vogue in this city than in any other part of the world, although there are no laws to enforce it.

And so, late in February of 1868, after the state had followed their lead, thousands of San Francisco workers marched down Market Street. Chris Carlsson notes in Shaping San Francisco that

they marched in order by when they began working 8-hour days: ship caulkers (Dec. 1865), shipwrights (Dec. 1865), ship joiners (Jan. 1866), ship painters (Mar. 1866), plasterers (Aug. 1866), bricklayers (Feb. 1867), Laborer’s Protective Benevolent Association (Feb. 1867), stone masons (Mar. 1867), stonecutters and marble polishers (May 1867), lathers (May 1867), riggers (June 1867), metal roofers (June 1867), house painters (June 1867), plumbers and gas fitters (July 1867), and the machinists, ironworkers, brass finishers, and their apprentices, not then working eight hours.

Carlsson adds that the new work standards didn’t last long. Employers understandably opposed the idea. The American economy tanked in the turbulent period following the Civil War, and thousands of unemployed workers in other parts of the country hopped on the new transcontinental railroad, seeking jobs in the Far West. At the same time, the vast workforce that had built the railroad found itself out of a job. The eight-hour day became a fuzzy memory.

But also a dream to pursue. The issue refused to die, either in San Francisco or in the rest of the country. In time, city after city and then state after state passed eight-hour-day laws. It wasn’t until 1938, however, that the federal government followed suit, and its law arrived laden with exceptions.

And now? Now we seem to have gone full circle. In an article published last year in the Nation, Steve Early and Suzanne Gordon point out that the practices of forced overtime and nonstandard shifts have made the issue moot.

One of labor’s greatest twentieth-century achievements — the eight-hour day and forty-hour week — is rapidly becoming a thing of the past for millions of people, with neither the AFL-CIO nor “labor-friendly” Democrats doing much about it.

The press has dutifully detailed its demise. According to today’s San Francisco Chronicle, the latest entry in the funeral procession is the University of California:

The annual overtime pay throughout the 10-campus UC system rose by 12.4 percent to a total of $135 million. It was shared among 49,218 employees, according to an analysis of UC’s $8.9 billion annual payroll.

It’s not that employers necessarily want to return to the days of the sweat shop. Early and Gordon say,

Extra pay for overtime hours — whether legally mandated or privately negotiated — was not intended to fatten weekly paychecks. It was supposed to be a financial penalty, encouraging employers to expand their workforce rather than rely on overtime to meet production needs.

But expanding the workforce means paying more for health insurance. Kim Moody and Simone Sagovac have published a pamphlet called “Time Out: The Case for a Shorter Work Week,” which explains,

When job-based benefits like health insurance began to bulk up labor costs, premium pay ceased to be a deterrent to overtime. It became cheaper for employers to schedule overtime than hire new workers

That’s one reason why the AFL-CIO has been throwing itself into a national health insurance campaign. But unlike the prosperous mid-1860s, when labor organizations could dictate terms, today’s workers are at the mercy of their employers unless government intercedes. In their party platform, the Democrats say that they are on the side of the workers:

Democrats are committed to an economic policy that produces good jobs with good pay and benefits. That is why we support the right to organize. We know that when unions are allowed to do their job of making sure that workers get their fair share, they pull people out of poverty and create a stronger middle class. We will strengthen the ability of workers to organize unions and fight to pass the Employee Free Choice Act. We will restore pro-worker voices to the National Labor Relations Board and the National Mediation Board and we support overturning the NLRB’s and NMB’s many harmful decisions that undermine the collective bargaining rights of millions of workers.

If they win the White House and the Senate, and if they remember who put them there, the old labor song might again become a reality:

Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest,
Eight hours for what we will.

Now that would be a real occasion for jollification!

Thanks for reading. I’m outta here.

The future of newspapers is a much-discussed topic these days. Print papers are struggling financially. Readership is down, and so is advertising, because people have found less expensive options on the Internet.

The situation is dire, but understandable: the Internet has injected new, unforeseen elements. Ultimately, it will manage to work itself out and news-gathering will adapt to the new technology.

Maybe.

But newspapers also face another, perhaps more disturbing element, one that is harder to understand. “The media” in general and print papers in particular have acquired a very bad rep. People don’t trust them. People don’t like them. They don’t like the papers’ content. They don’t even like having the papers around.

Am I overreacting? Take a look at this call to arms, published by the Municipal Art Society of New York:

The streets of New York City are littered with filthy, poorly maintained and decrepit newsracks that are both eyesores and potentially hazardous to New Yorkers.

Paris, London, Berlin and Amsterdam don’t tolerate this scourge on their streets, and Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami Beach, Houston and San Francisco have cracked down on the newsrack blight too. But New York City continues to tolerate it, and we think this is outrageous!

So we asked for your help in ridding our streets of these nasty newsracks.

As a beginning step, the society mounted an OUTRAGE! Nasty Newsracks photo competition. It posted the winning entry on its website on November 17, 2007.

The photo was judged to be the winner because it shows multiple violations of the City’s ordinances regulating newsracks: the newsracks are less than 15 feet away from a fire hydrant and all within a bus-stop zone; the bus is forced to discharge passengers outside of the bus-stop to avoid depositing them amid the racks; and the newsracks are dirty and unkempt, with one being used as a trash receptacle, and the glass door of another having been smashed in.

The proposed solution — a proper regulatory ordinance.

I’m puzzled. The six offending newsracks — yes, six, a well-established group, not a couple of mavericks — are violating an ordinance that is already in effect. Why has New York City not cited and removed them? They are “dirty and unkempt, with one being used as a trash receptacle.” As any newspaper owner knows, graffiti and vandalism are the bane of any city paper’s existence. Yet the victims are the ones who are punished, not the perpetrators.

The prize-winning photo shows a row of brightly colored boxes, a cheerful mixture of red and yellow and orange. They could have been related to the newsracks I described in the Flier nearly ten years ago, when San Francisco first sought to eradicate the journalistic scourge that was infecting its own streets:

They were a handsome lot as they paraded down the street: there was Weekly in cheerful red, yellow-coated Chron, Ex in white, Guardian in dapper black, and many others, each in its own special color. They had been on the street for many years, and the [Flier’s] little newsrack loved to listen to their stories. Murders, earthquakes, fires, celebrations — these old-timers had seen them all.

I wonder what the members of the Municipal Art Society would say if they saw the result of our crackdown. In accord with its contract with the city, Clear Channel has provided street corner after street corner with dark green monoliths. They are generally graffiti-free. But they are also generally half-empty. The bustling array of publications that once cluttered our sidewalks has decamped, making the sponsor’s original name — Clear Channel Adshel — truly appropriate. These are simply shells for ads.

But the program is booming. According to the Department of Public Works, it’s getting ready to expand, so that the city’s outer neighborhoods may share in the cleansing that has graced the downtown area. According to the Chronicle, to take this next step, DPW is planning to hire

news-rack program managers, sidewalk inspectors and engineers — additional city personnel needed to expand the program.

And those publishers who are still in the program are going to see their annual fees doubled, from $30 to $60 per box, beginning in September in order to pay for the added city employees. John Geluardi noted recently,

The fee increase poses a significant financial hit for your ever-humble SF Weekly.

And a person doesn’t need lessons in algebra to realize that such an increase can devastate smaller papers.

My 1998 Flier column is a funny children’s story, but it ends sadly. Not, I hope, presciently. Soon, it says, the Supes Finance Committee will approve the newsrack ordinance, and then the full board will follow suit.

Then the party could begin. Without the pretty red and yellow and gray newsracks. And maybe without their papers.

——————

In today’s Other Voices, the publisher of the Houston Tribune, Sharon Lauder, offers a look at how another city is wrestling with the same problem.

Thanks for reading. I’m outta here.

[No politics today. Just a short short story, what the Japanese call a "palm-of-the-hand tale." Or a beginning.]

Her eyes kept coming back to the pattern in the rug.

It was a beige rug, one of those pseudo-oriental designs with olive and rose geometric patterns arranged in apparently random configurations.  Flowers and leaves, of a species never seen on earth, curled around the edge. The center was broken up by vaguely rounded shapes, each with a significant-looking object in the middle, like a floating space traveler captured in a nebula. One was a face, a strange drooping face, but nevertheless a face, with sagging white eyes, full green ears, and a porcine snout outlined in burgundy.

She stared at it.

It spoke.

The voice was high-pitched, syrupy, emerging from somewhere inside two pudgy cheeks.

“You did it again,” it said. “Why don’t you give up?”

She watched as the area around the face undulated, emitting a musty odor, thrusting the dark circle forward. The face stared at her, its eyes distorted with sorrow.

“Give up,” it repeated.

She watched as the nose turned a deep carmine. A tear swelled in the corner of one eye and broke loose, rolling toward the pointed chin.

She glanced at the heap of sodden tissues next to her, wondering if she should offer to dry the damp line that was spreading down the rug. There were a lot of tissues. She had not realized how long she had been sitting there, curled up on the couch. Pain casts a spell on time, transforming hours into minutes and minutes into seconds. Only the pain remains the same.

Her head felt swollen. She looked out the open window, toward the telecommunications tower on top of Bernal Hill. It was hard to make out. Her eyes were having trouble focusing. A Stellar’s jay landed on the lemon tree in her neighbor’s yard and screeched. The sound seemed to come from far away. Something had muffled her ears.

“Give up.”

The words she had not allowed herself to say. The words she had not allowed herself to think. And now this misshapen caricature, this thing on the floor next to her, was inviting her to look behind the door that she had never dared to open.

She closed her eyes.

And looked.

She watched herself walk over to the table and tear up years of carefully rendered drawings. She saw herself take a saw-toothed knife and rip jagged slashes into a pile of canvases. She felt the weight of a rusty hammer as it swung and fell, smashing smooth clay figures into rough bits.

Her fists clenched. They turned into hard little stones. She walked over to the table and pounded them against the pile of rubble she had made earlier. A plume of reddish dust spiraled up, smelling of baked earth. Her fists were still hungry. She began to beat them against the wall, chipping away at the plaster, gouging a slit that grew wider. And wider. And wider.

The sight of red stains on the edge of the hole stopped her. She forced her fingers to straighten and stared at the macerated knuckles. Her hands throbbed. She thrust one finger into her mouth, tasting the warm sweetness of fresh blood.

A faint sound arose from the floor. She looked at the face. The lower corners of its eyes, which had once seemed likely to slide down its cheeks, were now beginning to contract. Tiny muscles made taut the once-flabby cheeks. The pale pursed lips expanded into the suggestion of a smile. Or was it a smirk?

“Well done,” she heard it coo. “Don’t you feel better?” She thought she saw a pink tongue caress the upper lip.

She looked at the mess on the table. She turned toward the wall, where twisted wires and rough studs were visible through the hole. Her fingers were beginning to swell. The fog of anguish that had obscured her vision lifted, burned off by a sharp physical pain.

Yes, she did feel better. Much better. She went into the kitchen and returned with a garbage bag, which she filled with the detritus on the table. Her hands trembled as she taped a piece of cardboard over the hole in the wall. She felt her knees buckle and leaned on the back of a chair to steady herself, gaining strength from the unyielding wood.

The face grinned up at her.

“Good job,” the voice said, as a mother praises an obedient child. “Now lie down next to me and let me ease your distress. You must relax and let it all go out of your life. Let it all go, as though it has never been. There, there. Let it all go. Isn’t that better? ”

Let it all go.

Let go.

Go.

Again the thick pile of the rug pulsed and settled. The face grew flat, its eyes mournful once more. She stared at it.

“Let go. It’s better that way.”

She stood up. Grasping the short side of the rug, she dragged it toward the opposite wall. She turned it completely around. Her eyes toured the sides of the room, looking for something. They lit on a small desk, a well-worn piece of furniture that had held her high school homework and her first sketchbooks. She pulled it toward the rug. It was lighter than she remembered. She lifted the desk and carried it toward the other side, the side where the face lay looking up at her.

She planted the little desk directly over the face.

“No,” she said. “This is better.”

From inside a drawer she pulled out a black-and-white photograph. She laid it on the desk in front of her. She drew up a chair and sat down. Her feet rested on the face in the rug.

“Much better.”

To be continued (maybe).

Thanks for reading. I’m outta here till Tuesday.

[As always, click on a thumbnail image to see it more clearly.]

On the third planet from the sun, the following appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle on July 13:

The green thumbs were covered with brown dirt Saturday at San Francisco’s Civic Center when 150 people who like to eat their vegetables planted an updated version of a World War II victory garden.

Elsewhere, in a parallel universe, a young queen was just finishing her morning toilette. She absent-mindedly scratched her head and removed two or three lice before picking up the sleekly pomaded wig that was her trademark. She smoothed a few stray wisps of  hair and settled it on her head. A quick glance in the mirror, a few minor adjustments, and she was ready to begin the day.

She turned to address the assembled courtiers.

“I’m bored. Let’s find something new to do today. What shall we do?”

Her words dropped into a deep and uncomfortable silence, as each of the assembled guests held back, hoping that someone else would throw out the first suggestion, which was almost always rejected.

“Well,” she repeated, “what shall we do today?”

Her eyebrows lifted into high arches as she looked around the room. A balding soldier sat in one corner, examining his fingernails. A young, well-dressed lady-in-waiting coughed gently into her handkerchief.

“Mr. Orr,” the queen said sharply. “Do you have a plan?”

The gentleman in question rose to his feet and bowed gracefully.

“I was thinking, Your Majesty, that we might arrange a painting party and decorate some of the apartments being constructed for the deserving poor. Psychologists have discovered that bright, cheerful surroundings are most effective in turning wayward paupers away from the streets.”

The queen pouted. “Not poor people again! Mr. Orr, we did that last week!”

Orr sidled toward the overstuffed cushion he had just vacated. His face was the color of a ripe eggplant.

“Well?” The queen snapped her fingers. “Are you all sleeping? Lady Kaye, what are your thoughts?”

A lean, dark-haired woman curtseyed deeply, her elbows jutting out at right angles above her waist as she endeavored to keep her balance.

“My lady,” she stammered, “perhaps you would care to organize a parade. It’s been many months since the last one” — she caught herself and gulped loudly — “and I’m sure the public has forgotten how you hid the route at the last minute. Today is too windy to carry torches, but a procession of handsome athletes carrying baseball bats would surely stir the populace.”

The queen drew herself up to her full height and pigeoned out her bosom.

“How dare you mention the last parade! Even the sight of the dowager queen showing off her toothpick legs in running shorts could not pacify those disappointed spectators.”

“Come, come,” she went on. “I will not sit idly today. We must do something, something visible, so that our loyal subjects will not forget our presence.”

At that very moment, the door opened and an old woman burst into the room. She wore a broad hat and a flowing magician’s cloak. Brandishing a rough staff half again as tall as she was, she swept up to the dais where the queen stood.

“Your majesty.”

The queen responded. “Biddy Babbling Brook.”

The newcomer pointed the leafy tip of her staff toward the queen and crumpled into a heap at her feet. Two pages rushed to her side and helped her rise.

“Your Majesty,” the old woman began again. “I have come to ask for your assistance in a grave matter facing our country. In this time of economic turmoil, many citizens go to bed hungry. I beseech you to follow the example of your ancestors and set aside a little plot of land to grow food that will ease their hardship.”

“I grow food? The queen had a shocked look on her face. “Would that involve digging in the dirt?”

“Only symbolically, my lady. You would have at your disposal a whole army of gardeners willing to get dirt under their fingernails for the good of the country. All you need to do is turn over the first shovelful of soil, using, of course, a dainty silver trowel especially designed to fit your tiny hands.”

The old woman stared at the queen, who was beginning to waver.

“Farms are messy, ugly places, crawling with unpleasant creatures and laid out in boring straight lines, Biddy Brook. I would not want to look at that every day.”

“May I suggest, Your Majesty, that you employ your finest landscape architects to create a new design. There is no requirement that gardens be arranged in close, parallel rows. I’m sure they could devise something else — a web of circles, perhaps.”

“But gardens take a long time to mature. I could not stand to wait. And I would find it distasteful to stare at bare dirt while the seeds were sprouting.”

“Then command that only large seedlings be planted. An instant garden is an exceedingly happy concept.”

The queen clapped her hands

“I will do it. Direct my stewards to begin preparations in the park just outside my window. And surround it with a sturdy fence so that thieving passersby cannot invade the space.” She thought a minute. “A sturdy fence, but a pretty one.”

The old woman bowed.

“I’ll deliver your orders immediately. But I do think, ma’am, that you might dispense with the fence entirely, in favor of a low, more welcoming wall. You could still control access by a few strategically placed gates. With a veggie patrol at night, that should suffice.”

The queen opened her arms wide.

“I can see it now,” she said, “hills of beans and corn and squash, surrounded by happy singing children. Soon all the world will know that I am truly the Green Queen.”

The courtiers bowed and murmured, “The Green Queen!”

The old woman slipped out the door. Once in the hall, she grinned and raised a triumphant fist. “Let a hundred flowers bloom,” she said, “and a hundred gardens prosper.”

Thanks for reading. I’m outta here till Friday.