Betsey Culp

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.

Just across Cesar Chavez from the “gritty Mission,” Bernal Hill rises 433 feet into the sky. Perhaps because it has more than the city’s usual allotment of open space, it’s also home to more than the city’s usual assortment of four-legged critters. In addition to the famed coyote, there are raccoons and possums and skunks galore. Several shops on the hill place bowls of biscuits on their counters for the resident dogs. And there are cats, lots of them.

I don’t think anyone has ever conducted a census, but cats seem to be even more numerous than dogs. They sit inside, staring out the window, watching life go by. They wander outside, investigating life in their neighbor’s garden. You don’t see their private interactions, but it goes without saying that some of them have active — and productive — sex lives.

The result became obvious about a year ago when one of the tenants on the east side of Bernal died. It turned out that he’d been generously supporting a whole colony of cats, the offspring of these promiscuous kitties. The now-abandoned cats had never really become domesticated and they quickly set up shop in a couple of vacant lots. The neighbors became concerned for their welfare.

Enter Elaine Perednia.

Elaine owns the Petsitters, one of those services that cares for dogs or cats — or goldfish or hamsters or boa constrictors — while their people are out of town. Her job meant that she was especially attuned to feline needs. She also knew how to get information about taking care of the orphans.

Because the City of St. Francis frowns on harming innocent members of the animal kingdom, the San Francisco SPCA has an active Feral Cat Assistance Program that provides valuable advice in cases like this. Before long, Elaine had recruited several neighbors to help feed the cats. And she herself got busy, trapping the strays and delivering them to the SPCA. Full-grown feral cats are accustomed to being on their own and don’t take kindly to adoption by humans. They were neutered and returned to the lot after a few days’ recuperation.

The cats were characters. One, dark and intense, protested all the way. Elaine named her Moxie. Once back in Elaine’s garage, awaiting repatriation, Moxie went on a hunger strike and refused to eat, no matter what tempting food was placed before her. Elaine feared that Moxie would starve to death and returned her to the lot early. She watched her flee under a fence and wondered if she would survive. But Moxie’s still there. She appears every so often and stares from a safe distance, looking fatter and sassier than ever.

Stella, on the other hand, wasn’t cut out for the outdoor life and knew it. Stella is a beautiful longhair with blue Siamese eyes. She settled into a cage in the garage and eyed Elaine calmly when she came bearing food. Stella had no trouble eating. And she didn’t appear the least bit worried by the presence of humans. Eventually, Elaine decided to move her upstairs into the house instead of returning her to the lot. Day by day, Stella grew more comfortable in her new surroundings. She found a cozy cushion in a corner and watched the other cats in the house, who seemed unthreatened by her presence. Soon she was wandering into the kitchen or climbing onto the bed with them. And before long she began to let Elaine pat her. She’d found a home.

One day when Elaine went down to the vacant lots to feed the cats, she discovered workmen clearing out the brush in one of them. They told her that their employer had just bought the properties and was planning to build on them. They also told her that they had discovered a mother and three kittens under one of the rocks they’d hauled away.

Great consternation! What to do?

But the workmen didn’t return. And the other lot remained overgrown.

Elaine began checking the lots at odd hours, looking for the kittens. For weeks, there was neither sight nor sound of them. Then one day they ventured out, exploring, just as she happened by. She scooped them up — they were each no bigger than a fist — and transported them to the SPCA. Not yet fearful of humans, they’ll easily adapt to human companionship. But the poor mother… she came back to the spot for several days, looking for them, waiting for them to return. Finally she stopped coming.

And still the workmen didn’t return. The brush on the other lot grew high, turning into a jungle. Every day Elaine and her helpers delivered food and water to the cats. Every night the cats crept out of their hiding places to eat and hunt and do whatever cats do at night.

Until last Friday, when the bulldozers arrived.

————————————

Tune in to Arthur Bruzzone’s Unscripted this week to hear my not-always-sane-and -sensible opinions on everything under the sun. (Channel 11 in San Francisco. Wednesday, 7:30 p.m. Thursday, 6:30 p.m. Friday, 8:00 p.m. Sunday, 8:00 p.m. On demand after that at SFunscripted.com.)

On the third planet from the sun, Bob Egelko wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle:

San Francisco — Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, a now-defunct organization that was once on the government’s terrorist list, said it learned it had been a surveillance target from a document that the National Security Agency inadvertently turned over in 2004.

The foundation returned the document at the government’s request. The Ninth U.S Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in November that the document was so sensitive that Al-Haramain’s lawyers couldn’t even rely on their recollections of it to establish wiretapping.

Elsewhere, in a parallel universe, a lawyer named Joseph L. walked down a long corridor in one of those gray nondescript buildings that houses government bureaucrats. In front of him, a uniformed guard stood beside a closed door. The door’s frosted glass was lit from behind. It was labeled with black lettering that read, “International Trading Corporation.

As L. approached, the guard held up his hand. L. stopped. He shifted his briefcase to his left hand and began to reach into the inside pocket of his suit jacket. The guard stepped forward and grasped L.’s wrist.

“Keep your hands where I can see them,” he said.

L. withdrew his hand and waited.

The guard snapped, “Identification, please.”

“It’s in my pocket,” L. said. “May I get it out?”

The guard pulled out an electronic wand and waved it over L.’s body. The wand emitted a soft beeping sound.

Satisfied, the guard stepped back. “Go ahead,” he said.

L. pulled out his wallet and handed his driver’s license to the guard, who read it carefully and consulted a list by his side.

The guard turned and pressed a button on the doorframe. L. could hear the sound of a buzzer on the other side.

The door opened. A small dark man looked out and motioned to L. to follow him.

The two passed through a large empty anteroom and into another hallway. After they had walked about a hundred meters, they came to a doorway flanked by two guards. One took L.’s briefcase and scanned it with an electronic wand. The other held up a small device that looked like a camera and pointed it toward the irises of L.’s eyes.

The guards nodded, and the small dark man rested his forefinger on a sensor near the door. The door swung open. He led L. into a small windowless office and seated him before an antiquated computer.

“This is where you’ll prepare your brief,” he said.

L. nodded. He knew the drill. How many times had he done it before, in the same office with the same unnamed man by his side? And yet the man never showed signs of recognizing him.

L. began to type. His task was simple: to prepare a brief in support of his client’s case, in response to the government’s arguments. He had never seen the government’s arguments and never would. They were based on classified documents, and their release might endanger national security. It was up to him to imagine what those arguments might be and to frame an appropriate response.

L. typed steadily for two hours, pausing only occasionally to rub his wrists. He was a poor typist, plagued by misspellings. All the while, the small dark man sat on a straight-backed chair, staring at the wall or examining his fingernails. The only sound was the soft click of the computer keys.

Finally, L. leaned back in his chair and stretched. He pushed the Print button on the computer and waited while his brief was spewed out page by page. He read what he had written, made a few corrections, and printed it out again. This time he handed it to his companion. He knew his own security clearance was so low that he could not expect a copy. He had no idea if the judge would receive one. He knew that the judge would never see the documents on which it was based.

The small dark man unplugged the computer and ran L.’s first draft through a shredder. He emptied L.’s briefcase and shredded his notes as well. Silently beckoning to L., he led him back the way they had come, down the long corridor, through the anteroom, and out the door.

L. walked quickly out of the building. When he reached the sidewalk, the sound of the passing traffic seemed deafening. The warm pungent air assaulted his nostrils. He paused, sloughing off the constricting atmosphere he had just left.

He wondered if he should call his client and tell him how the session had gone. There wasn’t much point to it. He never dared say too much, on the assumption that their conversations were being monitored. In any case, he was never sure that his efforts would bear any fruit. But he had to try. The knowledge that L. was working for his release would bring some measure of hope to his client, even if that hope soon turned out to be unfounded.

He pulled out his cellphone and dialed the number of the Terrorist Detention Camp.

Meanwhile, back on the third planet from the sun, Patrick Radden Keefe wrote in the New Yorker:

In October, [lawyer Lynne] Bernabei wrote a letter to the Justice Department. The attorneys representing Al Haramain had been dealing with a novel quandary of legal ethics. If they had a reasonable belief that any telephone conversation with Seda or Buthi might be monitored by the N.S.A., could they talk to their clients without violating attorney-client confidentiality? Bernabei requested confirmation that the government was not intercepting her “written or oral communications” with her clients. Two weeks later, she received a response from the lawyers at the Justice Department. They wouldn’t confirm or deny.

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

On the third planet from the sun, the New York Times wrote in an editorial,

[John C.] Yoo, who, inexplicably, teaches law at the University of California, Berkeley, never directly argues that it is legal to chain prisoners to the ceiling for days, sexually abuse them or subject them to waterboarding — all things done by American jailers.

His primary argument, in which he reaches back to 19th-century legal opinions justifying the execution of Indians who rejected the reservation, is that the laws didn’t apply to Mr. Bush because he is commander in chief.

Elsewhere, in a parallel universe, The Sink pulled his chair nearer to the window and looked out. The courtyard below was empty except for a few gardeners who were planting bushes for the afternoon’s brush-cutting. How he enjoyed that exercise! He was glad he’d instituted the custom when he moved into the Sink Hole.

But it was only 11:00, and he still had a few issues of state to solve before lunch. He perched his chin on his hand and sighed. “Sometimes,” he thought, “being The Sink stinks.”

He mentally leafed through the problems facing him. There were tremors in the economy, with stocks threatening to fall on Wall Street like Humpty Dumpty teetering on his wobbly perch. Not his fault. He’d done his best to calm things down. Time to sit tight and let the Sink 44 clean up the mess.

Those fellows in Iraq were at it again, threatening to tear each other and the entire country apart. Not his fault. He’d done his best to calm things down. Time to sit tight and let Sink 44 clean up the mess.

But there was that torture thing. He’d begun to hear rumors that people weren’t happy with the way he’d been treating prisoners. He’d done his best to calm things down, but somehow the old slogans weren’t working any more. He definitely didn’t want to sit tight and let Sink 44 clean up this mess, because he might be swept up in the process.

Once, several years ago, he thought he was safely barricaded behind a powerful set of legal arguments. What was the name of the nice young man who devoted so much time to the construction work? Oh, yes. John Mee. He’d called him Johnnycake.

But even though it was obvious that the arguments rested on firm historical precedents and even though they were cemented with fine constitutional reasoning, they caused a ruckus when they were finally made public. It would have been far better to have kept them secret, like so many of his other decisions. What people didn’t know couldn’t hurt him. It’s when they found out things that trouble started.

Maybe it was time to call on Mee’s services again. If his arguments were successful, Mee would become a hero. If they failed, he’d be run out of town for trying to subvert the government, but The Sink would escape unscathed. He could already see himself appearing on television, shaking his head ruefully at the misguided zeal of the youthful advisor.

Mee used to be in the capital, at the Department of Justice. But recently, the place had turned into a ghost town. Where had he gone?

A call to an aide provided the answer: “John Mee is now Inexplicable Professor of Constitutional Law at Guantanamo University. I’ve connected you.”

The Sink picked up the phone. “Johnnycake. Come back. I need you.”

On the third planet from the sun, Cecelia M. Vega wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle,

A series of new television and radio commercials, billboards and bus shelter signs will soon go up around San Francisco advertising the fact that the city by the bay is also a sanctuary city for illegal immigrants….

Officials said the public awareness campaign was prompted in part by a series of federal immigration raids around the region last year that left undocumented immigrants hesitant to come forward to seek medical treatment or report crimes, out of fear they might be deported.

Elsewhere, in a parallel universe, a handsome gray-haired man pushed open the doors of City Hall and walked quickly down the long row of marble steps toward a waiting limousine. Engrossed in conversation with a young woman, he nearly lost his footing as the rays of the western sun hit him full in the face. She reached out for his elbow, realized he had righted himself, and released her hand.

“No, I’m fine,” he said. “Just couldn’t see where I was going for a minute. Good thing the press missed my slip though.”

She smiled.

They took two steps and a man appeared below them, suddenly, as if he’d popped up from nowhere. He began to climb the stairs, staring down at his feet. A baseball cap pulled low over his forehead blocked their view of his face.

Two more steps, and he stood directly in front of the couple. He pulled out a handgun, aimed it at the gray-haired man’s chest and fired once, then ran toward the bushes that lined the stairs.

But the escape route was blocked. A short, dark man stood directly in his path, watching the encounter in horror. The assailant had no room to maneuver. He ran right into the onlooker, and the impact knocked off his cap.

No matter. He twisted to one side, found an opening in the bushes and disappeared.

The young woman screamed. “Mr. Mayor!”

Two uniformed guards ran up the stairs from the limo. One knelt beside the mayor, who had collapsed on the steps. The guard ripped open his shirt and pressed a handkerchief against the gaping wound in his chest.

The other guard turned toward the man standing near the edge of the stairs. “Did you see his face?”

The man nodded.

The guard pulled out a cell phone and called 911. The police arrived within minutes.

From this point on, the story is procedural. The police did their job. The witness did his. The mayor spent several weeks in the hospital but eventually recovered. His assailant was captured, tried, and convicted.

But that’s not the end of the story. In fact, it has two endings.

In one, the short, dark man was a Palestinian named Salim Beidas. He was an architect, trained in Paris. He had come to City Hall because it was one of the major buildings in the city, and had just happened to arrive in time to witness the attack on the mayor. He was a tourist who had been in the United States for ten days. The city awarded him a certificate of honor in gratitude for his help.

In the other ending, the short, dark man was a Palestinian named Salim Beidas. He was an architect, trained in Paris. He had come to City Hall because it was one of the major buildings in the city, and had just happened to arrive in time to witness the attack on the mayor. He was an undocumented immigrant who had worked in the United States for ten years. The city turned him over to the federal immigration authorities, who deported him.

On the third planet from the sun, Roger Runningen wrote in Bloomberg.com,

The U.S. wants to start construction next year of a missile site in Poland for 10 interceptors and a fixed radar site in the Czech Republic to counter a potential long-range missile threat from Iran.

And Randal C. Archibold wrote in the New York Times,

In a sweeping use of its authority, the Department of Homeland Security said Tuesday that it would bypass environmental reviews to speed construction of fencing along the Mexican border.

Elsewhere, in a parallel universe, Pfc. Sven Larsson emailed his mother in Minneapolis:

Hey Mom,

I’m on duty in a few minutes but I wanted to let you know that everything is OK here and I’m doing fine. I can’t tell you exactly there “here” is, but you already know it’s way south of where you are.

I can tell you that it’s beautiful. Nobody told me there were flowers in the desert. I thought it was all cactus and sand. Maybe it’s because it’s spring and we’ve had a little rain — my buddy who grew up around here says this is the rainy season — anyway, there are wildflowers everywhere. Red ones and yellow ones and purple ones and white ones. John tried to teach me what they’re called, I think he said something about monkey flowers and ocotillo, but my brain refused to fasten on them.

And more animals than I’ve even seen just wandering around in the wild. No, no camels. But in the few days I’ve been here, I’ve seen foxes and deer. Nearly stepped on a rattlesnake taking a sunbath. And Mom, the most beautiful bird I’ve ever seen. A golden eagle. Must have had a wing span of over six feet.

Most of what we’re doing is classified, but everybody knows that Fort Chertoff is part of a missile chain. Remember the article you cut out of the Star Tribune just before I left home? The photographs didn’t capture the size of the place — it’s enormous, with every imaginable kind of missile and technological doodad, just waiting for somebody to try to sneak across the border or send a long-range weapon our way. I spend a lot of time sitting in front of a computer screen, just watching not much of anything happening. Pretty cool army service, no?

Big excitement yesterday. The Sink — that’s military talk for the C-in-C, the Commander-in-Chief — The Sink stopped by unannounced. I guess he thought our morale needed boosting, because he told us what a good job we were doing and how vital our position was to the safety of the homeland blah blah blah.

But he told me something I didn’t know, how many years ago somebody suggested building a wall across the southern border of the U.S. to keep out terrorists and illegals, and people got all fired up because the project was going to take away their property and do all sorts of damage to the environment.

That was when Michael Chertoff just beginning to get the Department of Homeland Security into shape. And he said no way, we’re not going to copy the Chinese and build a wall. We’re going to use our heads and our scientific know-how and do it better. He said instead of building missile bases all over the world, why not just put a few good ones around the country here at home?

You’ve seen those pictures taken from outer space that show the U.S. ringed with lights. That’s us. I’m one of those lights.

And then the Sink gave us a plaque with a quotation on it, to put over the main entrance to the fort. He said it was by an old poet named Robert Frost.

It says, Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.

Right on.

Gotta run, S.

On the third planet from the sun, Gwen Knapp wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle,

For the most part, Zito didn’t throw harder than 84 mph all day. He knows his fastball has lost velocity, and doesn’t quite understand why.

Elsewhere, in a parallel universe, the fans roared with displeasure as the Big Z walked out to the pitcher’s mound. Once the standard-bearer of a bright new future, he had begun the season 0-3, after an embarrassing 9-25 the year before. The boos were deafening: their vibrations rattled the bleachers and whipped the pennants around their staffs. A sea gull hovering overhead in the hope of grabbing a crumb or two darted off in alarm.

Z just smiled. After months of experimenting, he’d come up with a new pitch — a really new pitch — and he knew it would work.

When he reached the mound, he stood still for a minute, staring at the batter. The noise from the stands poured over him like a cold shower, alerting every nerve.

Z inhaled deeply. Time to show them what he’d got. At the top of the windup, instead of doing his usual one-legged curl to the chest, he stretched his right leg straight up to the sky. Kicking the moon, like Warren Spahn and the Rockettes.

The crowd gasped. Something strange was happening.

He cocked his arm and sucked in his gut, preparing for the release. It came, with a lunge forward and an arcing of his arm so fast that the movement became a blur. He followed through, letting his fingertips linger for a nanosecond behind the trajectory of the ball.

But the ball hardly moved. It hovered two inches beyond the spot where Z’s fingers had pointed. Then slowly, ever so slowly, it began to float toward the batter’s box. Sixty feet, six inches, is a very long distance when it’s being traveled inch by inch.

The catcher crouched, his mitt poised, waiting. The batter stared intently. Then, as the seconds turned into minutes, he relaxed and his eyes began to wander. By the time the ball reached the strike zone, his eyes had glazed over and he was lost in the world of his own private dreams.

The ball fell softly into the catcher’s mitt.

Strike one!

The stunned crowd came to life and laughter filled the ballpark, followed by cheers. Z hadn’t thrown a strike in his last three trips to the mound. The batter lowered his bat and looked at the home plate umpire, who grinned back at him.

The next pitch clocked in at about 85 miles an hour, sailing right past the still shell-shocked batter.

Strike two!

As Z began the windup for his next throw, the batter visibly upped his concentration. He wasn’t going to get caught napping again. Again Z thrust his right leg to the sky. Again he released the ball and rested his fingers ever-so-gently in its wake. Again the ball hovered over the path to the batter’s box.

Again the batter stared blankly as the ball drifted by him.

Strike three!

The crowd went crazy. Grown men spilled their beer as they leaped to their feet and hugged their neighbors. Kids threw their caps into the air. Even the granny fans lost their composure, whooping and waving their orange sunhats.

This was only the beginning. Z retired the side and went on to pitch a perfect game, his new throwing technique completely baffling all his opponents, who were accustomed to the hyped-up tempo of a supplement-stimulated game.

Drawn by his success, other pitchers followed suit. By the end of the season, six-hour games were common. Stadium vendors and TV advertisers loved the new format. Personal trainers searched frantically for injectable substances that could help players to slow down their reflexes, while coaches turned to yoga and zen. And the seventh-inning stretch began to truly live up to its name, as fans got to their feet, awakened their slumbering muscles, and prepared for another two hours of baseball.

Simon ran up the street. Noticing that his feet pounded hollowly on the wooden sidewalk, he moved out into the road. Tiny puffs of dust rose behind him at every step. Frame houses rose like specters on either side, their shadows more distinct than the houses themselves in the gaslight. The street was open and deserted. An empty carriage stood with its shafts tilted against the curb. Across the street, a church with no steeple blocked out the moon.

He could feel the road begin to climb. What time was it? If he did not hurry, the people sleeping in the houses would begin to waken. He did not want to meet anyone on this road.

The houses grew taller. Hills rose higher and higher behind them, until Simon felt that he was about to be buried in a great canyon. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, but whose death? Rob’s? Or his own? He was not afraid of dying, but he did not want to be interrupted before he completed his journey. In any case, they would not kill him. Clearly he was mad, he must be. They would send him to Stockton, where all the mad people of San Francisco went. Simon knew about the insane asylum in Stockton. When Mary Maguire began to parade about in her petticoat, the police bundled her off to Stockton. When Peter Lenehan tried to burn down his neighbor’s house, he soon found himself aboard the Stockton steamer. It was a large brick building on an adobe plain, a place so crowded that inmates spent the night on the floor, kept awake by the ceaseless babble of voices, a place where the attendants did not hesitate to apply cold water or hard fists to control their charges. Had he left the sea to discover a new confinement in hell?

Even though he was breathing hard from the climb, he increased his pace. When he reached the corner of Vallejo Street, he turned left. The street spread out before him, every rut and pebble accented by the faint light of the day. A lone dog padded across, heading for a pile of refuse in front of one of the houses.

Simon came to the stone façade of St. Francis Church and stumbled up the steps. He pushed one of the heavy doors open a few inches and slipped inside. Before his eyes grew accustomed to the dark, he was assailed by the odor of smoke and incense. He stood in the doorway, uncertain what to do. A dark figure entered from a side door and walked toward the altar. Simon ran down the center aisle.

“Father Cotter!”

He stammered out his story. The priest spoke to him gently, trying to find the words that would wipe the terror from his eyes. At last, he took Simon by the shoulder and led him outside. They walked through the narrow alley that separated the church from the wooden wall of the distillery next door. Behind the church was a one-story cottage surrounded by a neatly swept garden. Father Cotter guided Simon inside, into a drab sitting room, where the two men sat until the San Francisco police arrived an hour later.

In the end, Simon proved his voices wrong: he did not hang. Nor did he return to Alcatraz, to join the prisoners in the guardhouse whose only view of freedom was the dried, yellow grass of the East Bay hills. Instead — for this is a “true” story — he made history, of a sort.

After a few days in the city jail, Simon Kennedy was turned over to the military authorities for trial. At his request, his commanding officer, Captain William A. Winder, served as counsel for the defense. The transcript of the trial shows that Winder, who knew the depths of his anguish, defended him passionately, arguing that in the civil courts,

no questions are there presented so difficult, so refined, so subtle, and so full of responsibility, as those of mental aberration…. [But] in the books relative to courts martial, a single authority cannot be found when the plea of insanity has been made in a capital case. So far as I am informed this is the very first that has been presented in the United States to a military court.

He asked the court to commit the defendant to “one of those institutions which human charity has dedicated to just such human frailty and weakness as has been unmistakably developed by the prisoner at the Bar.”

The plea was too novel. It seemed destined to fail. On August 4, 1864 a court-martial found Private Simon Kennedy guilty of manslaughter and assault with intent to kill, and sentenced him to life in prison.

But the story doesn’t end there. The case made its way to the top, to the desk of Major General Irvin McDowell, the commander of the Department of the Pacific of the U.S. Army. McDowell saw gray where the lower court had seen black and white, reprimanding the guards for allowing weapons in the possession of prisoners, especially one who was “suffering from mental derangement.” But he added, “As there is abundant evidence to show that the acts were committed whilst the prisoner was insane, he will be held in confinement till he can be sent to the insane asylum.”

And so, like many other human beings who have wandered through the streets of San Francisco, Simon Kennedy faded from sight. Or at least he would have, if the tale of the Black Point murder hadn’t caught the attention of an aspiring young writer at the San Francisco Daily Morning Call.