Betsey Culp

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.]

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.

(Warning: Contains a spoiler.)

Once upon a time, in the not-too-distant future, the material world overwhelmed the physical world. In other words, there was so much garbage on earth that it crowded out the people.

Human beings, being human and therefore somewhat intelligent, realized the spot they were in and took off for outer space, leaving a corps of robots to clean up the mess they had made. For several centuries, the bots labored, gathering up debris, compacting it into cubes, and piling them neatly. Over time, the mechanical workers began to fall apart, until only one remained. He took good care of himself. He recharged his solar panels as needed and replaced worn out parts with salvaged ones. Day in and day out, this little Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class continued at his appointed task, with only a single cockroach for company.

But Wall-E was a robot. He didn’t need company. At least, he didn’t at first. As the years went by, however, Wall-E began to change. Seeking shelter from the elements — for survival, not comfort, of course — he created a home for himself. He began to collect odd little artifacts — a light bulb, a doll, a slew of cigarette lighters. He found an old tape of “Hello, Dolly!” and divised a way to screen it. He watched that movie again and again, drawn especially to the singing and the poignant moment when the hero and the heroine join hands. He began to develop a personality.

Wall-E might have continued like this indefinitely, bringing home his treasures, watching his movie, meticulously piling his cubes of trash into rectangular patterns. But one day the city where he lived received a visitor. A lovely, white, ovoid Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator. Eve.

Wall-E, poor lonely Wall-E, immediately fell in love with Eve. He followed her everywhere.  He plied her with presents. He watched over her. But she was a young robot, without his transformative experience. She felt nothing. She was on a mission, assigned to discover whether there was plant life on earth.

It turned out that there was.

Eve dutifully took the tiny plant Wall-E gave her and returned to her space station, followed by her knight in rusty armor. There, in the midst of self-sufficient robots and humans gone flabby from years of weightlessness, he did his best to protect her from harm. Eventually, her precious cargo caught the attention of the ship’s captain, who realized that it was time to return to earth and restore the planet to its former glory.

And so they did. And everyone lived happily for a while, if not forever after.

It’s a good yarn. Pixar made it into a captivating animated film. But like its hero, the film has taken on a life of its own. In Sunday’s New York Times, Frank Rich said,

Mr. McCain should be required to see “Wall-E” to learn just how far adrift he is from an America whose economic fears cannot be remedied by his flip-flop embrace of the Bush tax cuts (for the wealthy) and his sham gas-tax holiday (for everyone else). Mr. Obama should see it to be reminded of just how bold his vision of change had been before he settled into a front-runner’s complacency. Americans should see it to appreciate just how much things are out of joint on an Independence Day when a cartoon robot evokes America’s patriotic ideals with more conviction than either of the men who would be president.

Jessica Jensen, writing in the Huffington Post, said,

The movie is an inspirational environmental call to action, and yet there is no mention of how or where people can learn to cut carbon emissions, save water, reduce their trash production, etc. Why didn’t Pixar put up a simple screen with “ten recommendations for loving planet Earth” at the end of the film — or a link to a site with educational information? It pains me that MILLIONS of people will see this movie and learn nothing about what they can do to save the planet!

On the other hand, Shannen Coffen, writing in the National Review Online, thought the film’s “call to action” went too far. He called the movie “Godforsaken dreck”:

From the first moment of the film, my kids were bombarded with leftist propaganda about the evils of mankind.

Meanwhile, Patrick J. Ford argued in the American Conservative that the movie’s message was actually conservative:

The real tragedy of these callous conservative critics (say that three times fast) is that they are missing the real lessons of the movie, ones I found immediately attractive to a traditional conservative. In the film, it becomes clear that mass consumerism is not just the product of big business, but of big business wedded with big government. In fact, the two are indistinguishable in WALL-E’s future. The government unilaterally provided it’s citizens with everything they needed, and this lack of variety led to Earth’s downfall.

Oh my! In the face of all these heavy hitters, what’s a poor, self-respecting robot to do? He didn’t know he was a political talking point. All he wanted to do was to get the girl.

When my son was little, we went to see the movie “E.T.” I have no great fondness for Steven Spielberg. In fact, my animosity toward his films is a family joke. As we walked out of the theater, I began expounding on the distasteful decisions he’d made in this one. My son listened to the lecture for about a minute before he interrupted: “Mom, it’s just a movie.”

So is “Wall-E.”

This is not to say that we can’t — or shouldn’t — find underlying meaning in movies or other works of art. The possibility of layered interpretations is what distinguishes valuable works from the pedestrian. But during the past few years, we’ve become Johnny One Note, and that note is politics. Johnny sang loud and long during the recent presidential campaign, where candidates trying to express genuine concern for genuine issues found themselves reduced to sound bites and horse-race handicapping. He continues to sing out every time anyone mentions the very serious problems facing Americans — health care, the economy, global warming.

His song drowns out the sounds of reality. It deafens us to what should be a siren’s call, ineluctably drawing us closer to the things we value most — our bodies, our communities, and our natural environment. “Couldn’t hear the brass; couldn’t hear the drum.” All we can hear is Johnny, blowing his political horn.

In contrast, “Wall-E” is nearly a silent film. There’s very little standing between the viewer and the life-and-death situations that the robots find themselves in. Yes, “Wall-E” is just a movie. And Wall-E is just a robot. But even though he is made of metal, not flesh and blood, his anguish — and joy — sings to anyone who listens. It’s up to us to pull the plug on Johnny and so we can hear his song.

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

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.

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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.)

A jubilant Gavin Newsom stood beneath the great rotunda of San Francisco City Hall yesterday, surrounded by happy people celebrating the State Supreme Court’s support for same-sex marriage. His reasons for joy were undoubtedly twofold. Not only had a just cause won, but the event, which the Bay Guardian’s Steven T. Jones calls “the most important civil rights ruling in a generation” had truly established him as a civil rights leader.

Here in San Francisco, Newsom’s public image rests on his role in furthering same-sex marriages. But elsewhere he’s known for his promotion of sustainable cities. Same-sex marriage is rarely mentioned.

He’s elsewhere a lot. Hardly a day goes by when his office and the media don’t announce that he’s just departed for, or just returned from, some far-off destination. At the beginning of this month, he headed off to Israel. He swung by New York City on the way back, pausing long enough to be interviewed by a beaming Dana Goodyear for the New Yorker Conference. No sooner had he touched down in San Francisco than he was off again, this time to testify before the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. Only a State Supreme Court decision on the constitutionality of same-sex marriage in California prevented him from going on from there to Chicago.

In all these trips, his focus is the same: sustainability, green building, fighting global warming at the city level. He’s come a long way from the wet-behind-the-ears mayor whom Tad Friend described in 2004 in the New Yorker magazine. The images that Friend presented in his article were vintage San Francisco stereotypes — he ended with this scene:

A suspiciously serene rally in favor of legalizing marijuana was going on [opposite City Hall], and the air was suddenly pungent with the substance in question.

I tried to counter them with a piece of my own in the San Francisco Call.

That was only four years ago, but it was a very different time. Taking a leaf from the book of his hero, Robert Kennedy, Newsom was attempting to solve the problems of San Francisco’s perennial homeless population. In the wake of 9/11 and the bursting of the dot.com bubble, the city’s economy was reeling. The war in Iraq had begun less than two years before, and the country was about to return George W. Bush to the White House. For the average American, global warming was just a gleam in a few environmentalists’ eyes.

Since then, both the Bush administration and the war he promoted have become festering wounds in the nation’s side. The economy has flown some astonishing loop-the-loops before descending in a frightening spiral. Even most die-hard conservatives consider the issue of climate change to be real, although some of their methods for addressing it remain less than serious.

Here’s where the new Newsom comes in. In the past year or so, he has refashioned his image from the Scourge of Homelessness to the Green Mayor. And the chief executive of the city that Tad Friend described as “an avatar of social rebellion” is now being talked about as the next governor of California. (Can you say “Gavinor”?)

The transition was probably gradual, but Newsom himself credits the 2007 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, for the change. In the course of his discussions there, he was surprised to realize that

the debate on global warming is over.

The new political theme would be the nexus of economic reform with environmental action. The new political leader would be a combination of Bobby Kennedy and Bill McKibben and Warren Buffet. In an interview at Davos, Newsom said,

How big an issue will global climate change be in the elections? If it’s not dominant, then the American people aren’t doing their job holding us to account. I can’t imagine a more important issue that unites the entire planet around one value. What else does?

He added, in the context of the 2008 election,

The presidential candidate that can link the issues of poverty & job creation to those that have been left behind in the last decade, the last half century, to the issue of global narrative on the environment & sustainability, that’s the person I’ll be electing, or voting for, in this election.

He was also talking about himself.

In his various travels, which the people of San Francisco hear very little about, Newsom presents himself as the mayor of a rapidly greening city. He says he was inspired to travel to Israel because of a plan to institute a nationwide network of electric cars there. His performance at the New Yorker conference included an almost poetic waxing on the subject of composting:

composting in food scraps
& getting into our public schools
& just seeing these little kids run up
& get rid of their little extra pasta or their beans
& then using that compost
& bringing it back to the schools to do edible schoolyards
& to have these kids learn an extended narrative of an urban-rural partnership
& understanding where food comes from, understanding their own environmental connection to food
& slow food movement
& the impact of agriculture as it relates to our waste stream
& the like

In Washington, he was the green businessman, explaining in hard facts and figures how San Francisco’s new building program was created with the support of builders and how it fosters the economy.

For once, the world is seeing a San Francisco that is not a city of kooks and wild-eyed radicals.

As Newsom travels, and as he presents himself to the political world, he must be aware of people’s knee-jerk reaction to the city he represents. It’s a major obstacle to being taken seriously. And in fact, he often jokes about it.

But he does more than that. He actually distances himself from the city of San Francisco, allying himself with his audience. In explaining anti-Israel demonstrations at San Francisco State to the Jerusalem Post, he said,

I think there is a lot of bias and bigotry, and frankly a lot of anti-Semitism.

When Dana Goodyear said that San Francisco had been described as “37 [sic] square miles surround by reality,” Newsom chimed in,

That’s a good way to describe it.

In Washington, he spoke of the city’s early legislation to require LEED certification for municipal buildings.

At the time people thought, “Again another typical San Francisco idea — San Francisco values — sky’s going to fall in — world’s going to come to an end — major tax increases — companies are going to run out of San Francisco.”

All of which, he added, was proven wrong.

It’s a tricky business, introducing yourself as a San Franciscan to the rest of the world. The quirky images beloved by the media can obstruct a clear view of our 47 square miles of reality. And it must be even more risky when the world regards you as “an aggressive progressive” (Dana Goodyear’s term).

What to do?

It seems to me that there are two alternatives. There is the one that Newsom has chosen: Distance yourself by joining the tomfoolery. The local press pays very little attention to the far-reaching scope of Newsom’s green plans and even less to events that occur outside the Bay Area. San Franciscans are unlikely to discover that their mayor has been playing Peter and denying his ties to them. And even if they do, it probably won’t make any difference in his future.

But there’s another possibility, one that’s far more generous and far more constructive. The local press has, for reasons of its own, not been interested in exploring the significance of Gavin Newsom’s initiatives. And the mayor’s office, for reasons of its own, has never spent much time on promoting its activities locally. It’s far more interested in publicizing what it regards as roadblocks erected by an obstructionist Board of Supervisors and the “chattering classes.” But you can’t tell me that our businessman-turned-mayor couldn’t find ways to market himself at home if wanted to.

Imagine what would happen if Newsom took even a portion of the energy he devotes to campaigning away from home and began to publicize his very real achievements to constituents here beyond the business community. Of course, he’d have to acknowledge the contributions of those obstructionist supervisors to the process. But the resulting spirit of cooperation might allow the city accomplish twice as much.

In the broader scheme of things, however, that might damage his prospects for higher office. It could be dangerous to be too popular in a city like San Francisco.

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

Dunes. One of my favorite mental exercises is to stand on a hilltop in San Francisco and try to imagine what the area looked like two hundred years ago. Erase the houses and streets. What would I see? Dunes. Lots of them. All over the Outside Lands, now home to the Sunset and the Richmond). Even downtown. In the 1840s,

the right-of-way of Market Street was blocked by a sixty-foot sand dune, at the location of the Palace Hotel now, and a hundred yards further west stood a sand hill nearly ninety feet tall. The city soon filled in the ground between Portsmouth Square and Happy Valley at First and Mission Street. The dunes were leveled and the sand used for fill.

These dunes were not the endless reaches of desert sand found in Dune or Lawrence of Arabia. Or the sandy expanses that I grew up with on the East Coast, in places like Jones Beach and Fire Island. San Francisco’s dunes were fairly stable hills, covered with a green lacework of tiny plants, spread like antimacassars over an overstuffed easy chair. Bush lupin. Monkey flowers.

Climb to the top of Turtle Hill, at 15th and Noriega. On a clear day, you can see tomorrow. The majestic scenery contrasts with the poignancy of the view at your feet. Some of these small plants — the dune tansies and the Franciscan wallflowers — are marked for extinction. Although far more humble than the proud and gorgeous rose so beloved by Saint-Exupery’s Little Prince, their fate is no less precarious.

There’s a wonderful website run by Earth Island Institute called Nature in the City. Its goal is

To conserve and restore the nature and biodiversity of San Francisco and connect people with nature where they live.

Good idea! But the preposition in the title is disturbing. And so is the one in the final phrase of the mission statement. “Nature in the City.” “Connect people with nature.”

Not so long ago, people accepted the mind-body dualism proposed by philosophers ranging from Plato to Descartes. The idea was that human beings were composed of two separate entities — the mind and the body — and ne’er the twain shall meet. Made us kinda special, compared with the other, dumber critters of this world.

But no more. Modern science and New Age metaphysics have both demolished the theory. The human mind and body are now taken as a package deal, as one and the same thing.

Now the dichotomy has shifted from inside us to our relationship with the outside world. It’s we versus them. People versus nature. Remember Terence’s old saying, “I am a man, so nothing human is strange to me”? It suggests other things are indeed strange — because they’re nonhuman. The statement lets human beings off the hook for whatever happens in the rest of the world.

This dualism is an issue that the environmental movement is only beginning to address. But as long as we think in terms of a human-nature split, we’re going to have a hard time rectifying the damage that our actions have caused.

The times they are a-changing, perhaps out of necessity. San Francisco “The City That Knows How,” would to well to look slightly to the south. Every year Sustainable San Mateo County issues an “Indicators Report” on the state of the county:

The sustainability of a region typically is measured by markers, or indicators, of community vitality. These include assessments of resources such as air quality, water quality, and biodiversity; social and economic indicators such as housing affordability, crime rates, and unemployment.

Sometimes clichés say it all: We’re all in this together. Sink or swim. That’s the nature of a city.

MediaWatch. It all started in a piece by Carl Nolte published on March 7, called “One Rincon residents are moving in,” where one of the new residents said,

“I feel like an urban pioneer.”

Nolte continued the image, but his tongue seemed rest firmly in his cheek.

Then along came C.W. Nevius, in a column published Sunday. Nevius has found some spirits who are kindred to Nolte’s. One

calls herself a pioneer — ready to take to the edge of the urban frontier, stake out a small piece of property, and hope that it will turn out to be a place they can make a home.

Another, an architect, says,

“They’re homesteaders. Modern homesteaders, charting a new course.”

Nevius chimes in:

They’ve certainly got that pioneering spirit.

Calling gentrifiers “pioneers” is so old hat. Way back in 1996, geographer Neil Smith published a book called The New Urban Frontier. Even then, the term was a bit moldy. Smith notes,

In the language of gentrification, the appeal to frontier imagery has been exact: urban pioneers, urban homesteaders and urban cowboys became the new folk heroes of the urban frontier. In the 1980s, the real estate magazines even talked about “urban scouts” whose job it was to scout the flanks of gentrifying neighborhoods, check the landscape for profitable reinvestment, and, at the same time, to report home about how friendly the natives were. Less optimistic commentators indict the emergence of a new group of “urban outlaws” in connection with inner-city drug cultures.

Moldy or not, words have meaning. In this case, Smith adds,

The term “urban pioneer” is… as arrogant as the original notion of “pioneers” in that it suggests a city not yet socially inhabited; like Native Americans, the urban working class is seen as less than social, a part of the physical environment. [Frederick Jackson] Turner was explicit about this when he called the frontier “the meeting point between savagery and civilization,” and although the 1970s and 1980s frontier vocabulary of gentrification is rarely as explicit, it treats the inner-city population in much the same way.

And it still does.

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