1. Knowland Park expansion before Planning Commission 6 pm TONIGHT
2. Vote for Alemany Farm EVERY DAY
3. SF Veterans Administration Medical Center plans mega-expansion overlooking Golden Gate - April 26
4. Juliano Mer-Kahmis, Jew, Arab, actor and activist killed
5. Earth Day movement misses the big issue: population
6. Deportation of most serious criminals under assault
7. Poet Randall Jarrell on the Northern Mockingbird
8. Save the date: Living With Coyotes - May 12
9. Some thoughtful and provocative quotations
10. Spring Habitat Tour on Mt Sutro April 23
11. Clean up the gardens at Warm Water Cove April 23
12. Earth Stroll 2011 at Crissy Field April 23, 10am-3pm
13. SPAWN Lagunitas Creek watershed cleanup Apr 23
14. Can Poetry Save The Earth? April 27 in Berkeley
15. Restore Hetch Hetch is recruiting interns for the summer
16. Feedback
17. Gay pride and prejudice; two interesting book reviews
18. George Soros: What is the world isn't worth saving?
19. The notion of 'saturation' of the market is based on old-fashioned psychological assumptions
20. GGNRA and SF Maritime National History Park Open House April 26
21. Global Warming Gridlock: Creating More Effective Strategies for Protecting the Planet. The world isn't up to it
22. Our star, the Sun. Don't take it for granted. And worship it
23. Papers and artifacts of famed astrophysicist Fred Hoyle/astrophysics miscellany
24. Hungry mice remember more/yon Cassius thinks too much
25. Notes & Queries: Why are white people referred to as Caucasians?/Why is democracy considered best form of government?
Guardian Weekly
Quote of the week: "The interests of future generations are not represented in decisionmaking." József Szájer, an official from Hungary's ruling conservative Fidesz party, commenting on a proposal to give mothers with small children extra votes in elections.
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1. Knowland Park expansion
April 20 6 p.m., Oakland City Hall
The Oakland Planning Commission will be deciding whether to approve the zoo expansion project in Knowland Park this coming Wednesday (the 20th) at 6 o'clock in City Hall. Public comments will be permitted. Friends of Knowland Park encourages everyone who values this vital open space to attend. Now's the time to speak up! Learn more at www.saveknowland.org.
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2. Alemany Farm right here in SF is in the running to be one of 5 community gardens in the US awarded $4000. Whether it gets the money or not depends on votes from the public. Like yours.
Here are the instructions:
Go to http://www.deloachcommunitygardens.com
That will get you to a colorful display of 15 small photos, each one of which represents a community garden somewhere in the US. Alemany Farm's photo is the one in the upper left corner.
Each photo has a whitish arrow in the middle of it, Click on the whitish arrow.
You will then be linked to a box in which you may vote. You need to type in your email address and your name, and, presumably click on the little box that says you don't want to get messages from the nice folks at Deloach. Click on "Submit your vote". That's it! You should see the total of votes go up by one.
Here's the most important thing of all: EACH PERSON MAY VOTE ONCE PER DAY FROM NOW UNTIL AUGUST 1. SO DON'T JUST VOTE ONCE! BOOKMARK THE SITE, AND VOTE EVERY DAY!
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3. The San Francisco Veterans Administration Medical Center occupies 29 acres in the northwest corner of San Francisco. It is surrounded by national parklands (GGNRA), the City’s Lincoln Park, and the Palace of the Legion of Honor, as well as a quiet residential neighborhood. Over the next 20 years, the SFVAMC intends to build 1 million square feet of new development, including parking for at least 1,000 cars on this fragile site. Much of this development is for research or administration – not for clinical services for our veterans. This “city within a city” will be visible from the Marin Headlands.
A Public Meeting will be held Tuesday, April 26 from 6pm-7pm in the Auditorium, Bldg. 7, 1st Floor of the SFVAMC campus, Clement Street between 42nd and 43rd Avenues to comment on the scope of the environmental review that is being undertaken as part of the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS] for the Institutional Master Plan (IMP).
Download the Institutional Master Plan outlining this development at: http://www.sanfrancisco.va.gov/docs/IMP_2010.pdf
NOTE: (22 MB file).
Written or verbal comments can be provided during the April 26 Neighborhood Meeting.
If you cannot attend the meeting but would like to submit written comments, please direct them to (please copy julieburns@aol.com ):
John Pechman
Facility Planner
San Francisco VA Medical Center (001)
4150 Clement Street
San Francisco, CA 94121
John.Pechman@va.gov
The comment period will close April 29, 2011.
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4. Juliano Mer-Khamis, Jew, Arab, actor and activist, died on April 4th, aged 52
Apr 14th 2011 | from The Economist print edition (slightly condensed)
20110416_obp001.jpg
THE two young men in the suicide-video were bearded, nervous and pale. They stood in their camouflage fatigues and bandannas in front of the flag of the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades. One, carrying a rifle, would not look towards the camera. The other read out a message to friends and family, bidding them a terse goodbye: “Heaven is precious, and jihad is the way.”
Some years before, Juliano Mer-Khamis had worked with these boys in his mother’s theatre in Jenin, in the Palestinian West Bank. Their names were Nidal (with the rifle) and Yousef. Nidal, with his cheeky smile, had crawled around on all fours pretending to be a cat, miaowing daringly round the legs of the girls. Stouter Yousef had preened himself in crimson silk, playing a king. Now he was on his way to kill four Israelis and wound 40 more.
Many might conclude that his brush with theatre had done no good at all. Mr Mer-Khamis drew the opposite conclusion. The horror of Yousef and his murders convinced him that the teeming, dilapidated refugee camp in Jenin needed more stagecraft, not less. He didn’t believe that acting would heal the trauma of Israeli invasion, destruction and occupation; as one of “his” boys said later, “He doesn’t feel sorry for us.” Acting to him was never just a distraction, art for art’s sake. It was a means of strengthening Palestinian resistance by freeing the self and gaining confidence. Rather than throwing stones or learning to shoot, his young actors could curse, dance, shout poems, sing. With his deep, passionate voice and wildly waving arms, he would teach the children of Jenin to hurl words and music at the occupiers until they overcame them, and the armoured cars trundled back across the Green Line. “Aren’t we here for something?” he would cry to the faint-hearted.
...His own identity was another question. His ideal, flung out with his usual unstoppable bravado, was to be nothing, selfless, unlabelled, just a free human being. Yet, if anything, he wore too many labels. He was a Jew, the child of a mother, Arna (“the sun in our house”), who had fought as a pioneer for the state of Israel before becoming a feisty, raucous advocate of Palestinian rights. He was an Arab whose father, an Arab Christian, had led the Communist Party in Nazareth. He could be a good Israeli, doing his army service as a paratrooper and acting the hero in gung-ho films such as “Kippur” or “Rage and Glory”. And he was Palestinian, in the sense that when he strolled through the Jenin streets, familiarly cuffing and glad-handing the children who swarmed round him, he was one of them.
Two tribes
Yet he never was one of them exactly. Though Jewish extremists saw him as an Arab, in Jenin he was “Uncle Jule”, the good Jew, frustratingly pigeonholed as a philanthropist. At worst, some of the boys who acted for him thought he might be a spy for the occupation. He co-founded his theatre with Zacharia Zubeidi, once the military head of the al-Aqsa Brigades, whom he had inspired to turn away from violence. It didn’t help. Suspicious parents saw him as an Israeli agent, an unwelcome proselytiser for Western values who let their daughters act with boys and even take the leading roles.
He had a secular Israeli’s loose informality; but he always found Israel hard to deal with. As a soldier in 1978 he was ordered to drag an elderly Palestinian from his car; he refused and was sent to prison, realising then that “the outfit could not fit”. His film about his mother’s theatre, “Arna’s Children” (2004), which included the story of Nidal and Yousef and their transformation into terrorists, was not exactly banned in Israel, but it was neither distributed nor discussed. He felt he was an “alien being” before an Israeli audience, and considered Israeli society “pathological”. Though he lived in Haifa, he found himself spending longer periods in Jenin.
By this spring, however, Muslim hostility to his projects was becoming harder to bear. The theatre had twice been firebombed; in 2009 flyers had been sent to him, warning of bullets if he stayed. In one interview he said he had never felt so Jewish as he did now in Jenin, suddenly needing every scrap of his field training, thinking like a beleaguered soldier. When he was killed outside his theatre, shot five times by a man who apparently had links to Hamas, some marvelled that he had not tried to leave the camp sooner. But he was from the elite Sayeret unit, he had explained once. They never ran away.
"The obstinacy of human beings is what enables them to fight for their countries, repel invaders and maintain their solidarity. But it is also what makes it so hard to fix what needs to be fixed." Martin Woollacott, Guardian Weekly, 6-12 May 2004
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5.
Earth Day Movement Misses the Big Issue: Population by Joe Guzzardi
Earth Day 2011 titles itself “A Billion Acts of Green”. But its official website makes no mention of population control, the ultimate green practice.
As long as the most environmentally enlightened Americans ignore the relationship between population growth and environmental sustainability, then America will lose the green fight. In the 1970s, reducing population was so mainstream that biologist and Stanford University Professor Paul Ehrlich regularly appeared on the Johnny Carson Show as an advocate. Today, it’s rarely mentioned.
As America approaches 310 million people, on its way to a billion unless the current population trend is reversed, here are a few facts compiled by Mother Jones that the 80 percent of young married couples who start families should consider. Between 2000 and 2050, the U.S. will add 114 million kids to its population. Africa will add 1.2 billion. But because of the high U.S. consumption rate, the respective CO2 emissions of both nations will be identical. During their childhood, many of those U.S. kids will travel to school on buses, 95 percent of which run on diesel and release 3,700 tons of soot and 11 million tons of greenhouse gases annually. School-bus exhaust is linked to higher rates of asthma and lung cancer. After school, kids’ number one pastime is watching television. But up to 223 trees would be required to offset the CO2 produced by a child who watches 3 hours of TV every day for 18 years. Of course, those kids will have their own kids, so on and on the results of overpopulation will go.
Refusing to talk seriously about population growth also means that American leaders have avoided any discussion of immigration’s role in the crisis. During the last 25 years, the mainstream media and the federal government have consistently advocated for more immigration without any reference to how many immigrants a country concerned for its own ecological and sociological future can accommodate.
The question never asked in the newsroom or on Capitol Hill: “What is the optimum level of annual immigration for a nation that seeks to embrace the highest ethical standards for its citizens and hopes to provide an example to the world that lower population leads to a more compassionate government for all?”
Population growth has momentum. If the U.S. hopes to avoid the pressures on energy, infrastructure, water, air quality, and urban sprawl, to name only a few, then it cannot postpone a meaningful immigration discussion until the nation is squeezed with 500 million people. According to the U.S. Bureau of the Census that frightening date could arrive as soon as 2050.
The solution to slowing America’s population is two-fold. First, restore traditional levels of immigration to their pre-1965 200,000 annual average. That would help keep displaced Americans and recently arrived immigrants in the job market. At the same time, advocate for limiting family size. Having two or more children is not an obligation.
The long forgotten “Zero Population Growth” campaign so widely embraced during Ehrlich’s era must be revived and promoted, especially in our classrooms so that future generations will be as aware as we were in the 1970s. ZPG’s philosophy originally outlined four decades ago is more critical today than it was then: “a constantly increasing population is responsible for many of our problems: pollution, violence, loss of values and of individual privacy.”
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Joe Guzzardi has written editorial columns—mostly about immigration and related social issues - since 1990. He is a senior writing fellow for Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS) and his columns have frequently been syndicated in various U.S. newspapers and websites. He can be reached at JoeGuzzardi@CAPSweb.org.
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6. Secure Communities is a Dept of Homeland Security program to identify criminal aliens in U.S. jails. California, like other states, entered into an agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) under which police check arrestees’ fingerprints against immigration databases. The program emphasizes deporting the most serious criminals.
AB 1081, by Assemblymember Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco), would undermine this process by overruling the state Department of Justice’s agreement with DHS and requiring each county to approve a new resolution to rejoin Secure Communities before it could be applied in that county.
CLICK HERE to learn more and to take action!
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7. Northern Mockingbird
The Northern Mockingbird has a broad repertoire. It can mimic everything from other birds to inanimate objects. And it does so at all hours of the day and night. As poet Randall Jarrell put it:
On the willow's highest branch, monopolizing
Day and night, cheeping, squeaking, soaring,
The mockingbird is imitating life. ---
Learn more about the Northern Mockingbird at Cornell University's All Birds.
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8. Save the date:
May 12, 2011 (6:30pm PST)
Gina Farr- guest speaker; presentation- Living with Coyotes. Sponsored by San Francisco Recreation & Parks and Project Coyote. San Francisco County Fair Bldg, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco.more info.
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9.
"May you live all the days of your life." Johnathan Swift
"Deeds need time, even after they are done, to be seen and heard." Friedrich Nietzsche
"The day is coming when a single carrot, freshly observed, will set off a revolution." - Paul Cezanne
"The first step towards philosophy is incredulity." - Denis Diderot
"Do exactly what you would do if you felt most secure." -- Meister Eckhart
No kind action ever stops with itself. One kind action leads to another. Good example is followed. A single act of kindness throws out roots in all directions, and the roots spring up and make new trees. The greatest work that kindness does to others is that it makes them kind themselves. Amelia Earhart
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10. SPRING HABITAT TOURS ON MOUNT SUTRO
Saturday April 23, 10 AM – 12 Noon or
Sunday May 1, 10 AM – 12 Noon
Location: Woods Lot, 100 Medical Center Way, UCSF Parnassus Campus
Join Craig Dawson, Executive Director of the Sutro Stewards, for a guided habitat tour showcasing Mount Sutro's native plant colonies in bloom. You'll have an opportunity to tour the trail network, learn about the history and habitat of the area and see some of San Francisco's rarest native plants during this unique heart of the City trek. Our tour will include the former NIKE radar site which has been converted to a native plant meadow at the summit.
You must RSVP for this event online or via email to Craig@SutroStewards.org. Space is limited.
Parking is available for this event at our meeting location.
$10-20 donation to support Sutro Stewards programs, can be paid cash/check on the day of the trek.
See more event listings or RSVP at Sutro Stewards website:
http://sutrostewards.org/events/event/listUpcoming
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11. GreenTrust Earth Day Warm Water Cove volunteer and More
We are having an Earth Day Clean-up-the-gardens-at-Warm-Water-Cove morning on Sat. April 23, 9:30 am-12:30 pm, at Warm Water Cove, 24th Street at the Bay, 2 blocks east of Third St. and light rail stop, in Dogpatch. Help those wildflowers that we planted on Jan. 23. They are starting to Bloom! but the weeds are invading. Bring water to drink, sturdy shoes and sun protection. We will have morning coffee compliments of La Stazione cafe (Dogpatch), and snacks and juice from the Good Life Grocery on Potrero Hill. Gloves, tools and Bay views provided.
Also we are joining Community Clean Team this Sat. April 16, 9 am-noon at Agua Vista Park, on Terry Francois Blvd. just north of Mariposa St., on the Bay.
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12. EARTH STROLL 2011
Saturday, April 23, 10 AM–3 PM
Crissy Field Center
1199 East Beach in the Presidio
San Francisco
Celebrate Earth Day and the 10th anniversary of Crissy Field’s historic transformation by bringing the whole family to Earth Stroll! Meet live animals, play parachute games, and test your riding skills in a bike rodeo at this beloved national park. The event is free, open to all ages, and highlights simple things you can do to create a healthier planet—and a healthy you. Donate $5 and receive a special Crissy Field 10th Anniversary Commemorative Passport.
For more information visit www.crissyfieldcenter.org.
Please note: event parking will be limited and public transport is strongly encouraged. Crissy Field Center is accessible via MUNI #28, 30 & 43 lines and you can visit www.crissyfield.org for transportation details. Overflow parking will be available along Gorgas Avenue from Halleck Street toward and behind the Presidio Community YMCA Letterman Gym and pool
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13. The Salmon Protection and Watershed Network (SPAWN), in collaboration with the AmeriCorps Watershed Stewards Project, Transition West Marin and the Center for Volunteer and Nonprofit Leadership.
A celebratory Earth Day work party to restore endangered coho salmon habitat on Lagunitas Creek - planting natives, removing invasive non-natives from the floodplain, and transplanting seedlings for future restoration projects throughout the Lagunitas Creek Watershed.
9255 Sir Francis Drake Blvd. in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, four miles from Point Reyes Station, CA.
Saturday, April 23rd, 2011 at 10am.
Federally-endangered coho salmon and threatened steelhead trout live and spawn in Lagunitas Creek and its tributaries. Habitat pressures through development, erosion, and competition from non-native vegetation have altered the watershed. In order to protect the salmon and trout, SPAWN engages and educates volunteers to help save these species.
Emi Bauman, SPAWN Americorps Intern, Watershed Stewards Project, (415) 663-8590 x118, emi@spawnusa.org
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14. A reading based on CAN POETRY SAVE THE EARTH?: A Field Guide To Nature Poems by John Felstiner.
Poetry by Walt Whitman, Elizabeth Bishop, Pablo Neruda, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Denise Levertov, Robert Frost, A.R. Ammons, William Stafford, D.H. Lawrence, Robinson Jeffers, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Gary Snyder and more.
Read by Susan Griffin, Rafael Jesús González, Lucille Lang Day, David Shaddock, Chris Olander, Dennis Fritzinger, Jahan Khalighi, and Kirk Lumpkin with commentary by John Felstiner (Professor of English at Stanford University, author of the prize winning Paul Celan: Poet, Survivor, Jew.)
“Felstiner’s [Can Poetry Save the Earth?] is a series of deep reflections on some of the finest, steadiest British and American poets of the last five centuries . . . It is not about their ideology or activism, but their seeing of the actual world . . .their deeply felt love for it.” —Gary Snyder, poet, Beat, Pulitzer Prize winner
Susan Griffin is a poet, essayist, playwright and screenwriter. Named by Utne Reader as one of a hundred important visionaries for the new millennium. Her book A Chorus of Stones, was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Award, and winner of the BABRA Award in 1992 and a NY Times Notable Book of the Year. Her play Voices, which won an Emmy in 1975 for a local PBS production, has been performed throughout the world, including a radio production by the BBC.
Rafael Jesús González, is a poet, Professor Emeritus of Creative Writing & Literature, & founder of Laney College's Mexican and Latin American Studies Dept. In 1996 he was named Poet in Residence at the Oakland Museum of California and the Oakland Public Library. He was chosen for the Annual Award for Literary Achievement by Dragonfly Press in 2002. His most recent book is La musa lunática/The Lunatic Muse.
Lucille Lang Day is the author of eight poetry collections and chapbooks, most recently The Curvature of Blue. She has also published a children’s book, Chain Letter, and her memoir, Married at Fourteen, will appear from Heyday in 2012. Her poetry and prose have appeared widely in such magazines and anthologies as Atlanta Review, The Hudson Review, The Threepenny Review, and New Poets of the American West.
David Shaddock is author of the psychology book From Impasse to Intimacy and the poetry book In This Place Where Something Missing Lives: “David Shaddock’s poems take up the ancient Jewish tradition which Arthur Waskow . . . has called ‘God wrestling.”—Denise Levertov
Chris Olander is a CPITS poet, eco-educator, and a California State Championship Poetry Coach for Poetry Out Loud.
Dennnis Fritzinger is the author of Earth National Park, Tame Wilderness, and Poetry Editor of Earth First! Journal.
Jahan Khalighi is a spoken word artist who was a member of the Eugene Slam Poetry Team, and has co-organized Eco-Arts Festivals around the Bay Area with CommuniTree. He is a staff member with the Ecology Center and a Board Member for Planting Justice.
Kirk Lumpkin is a poet, performer, and works for the Ecology Center as the Special Events and Promotions Coordinator of the Berkeley Farmers’ Markets.
“ . . . solid real illumination...”—Michael McClure, Beat poet & playwright
“No matter what, he will make sure the sidewalks are shaking before you go home.—Examiner.com
Cost: FREE
Wednesday, April 27, 2011,
7:30pm
Ecology Center Bookstore
2530 San Pablo Ave., Berkeley
(San Pablo at Blake St., just south of Dwight Way)
Accessibility: Public transportation—Buses on San Pablo Ave. and Dwight Way; street parking, wheelchair access.
For More Information: (510) 548-2220 ext. 227; www.EcologyCenter.org
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15. RECRUITING INTERNS
Restore Hetch Hetchy, the national campaign to bring the Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park back to life, is recruiting talented, smart and funny applicants for multiple internship positions. All internships are unpaid and based in downtown San Francisco. This is a unique opportunity to develop environmental advocacy skills.
Interested applicants should send a cover letter indicating which internship they are applying for and why, a resume and list of 3 references to connie@hetchhetchy.org.
Communications Interns (3)
Available Immediately - 8 week minimum commitment through August 2011
Provides support to RHH earned media campaign designed to strengthen advocacy efforts within San Francisco. Interns will work in coordination with pro bono PR experts and report to the Executive Director. Day to day responsibilities will include but not be limited to drafting monthly e-newsletters, updating social media sites, coordinating letters to the editor, outreach to neighborhood media, and rapid response. This great opportunity to develop hands-on experience promoting a historic environmental campaign. Applicants must be outgoing self-starters with a passion for the environment.
Special Events Interns (3)
Available Immediately - 8 week minimum commitment through August 2011
Special Events Interns will focus primarily on organizing and implementing Muir's March and the RHH Restoration Rally. Muir's March is a 7 day, 45 mile trek (August 1-7) across Yosemite National Park designed to raise funds and build awareness for the campaign. Day-to-day responsibilities will include but not be limited to marketing event, recruiting participants, coordinating logistics, coordinating training hikes, recruiting volunteers and participants for Restoration Rally. Will also provide support to annual spring fundraising dinner.
.
Field Organizing Interns (6)
Available Immediately - 8 week minimum commitment through August 2011
Field Organizing interns will focus primarily on organizing three events:
1) A hike at Hetch Hetchy to commemorate National Trails Day on June 4, 2011
2) A student lobby day at San Francisco City Hall in mid-July, 2011
3) Two "outreach weekends" designed to identify 1000 supporters in SF.
Day-to-day responsibilities will include but not be limited to designing events, coordinating logistics, recruiting participants, implementing marketing/media plan and all post event acknowledgements. Applicants must be outgoing self-starters with a passion for the environment and experience working with volunteers and/or children.
All summer interns must participate in an overnight campaign trip in Yosemite in June.
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16. Feedback
Anne Boleyn:
> Dear Jake, please do not use my real name for this response. I would like to put a word in for all the single childless women over fourty who have chosen not to have children. We are treated very badly in general. We are told we are "unnatural" and not nurturing and even crazy and child haters or even are accused of being jealous of women who have children. We do not get child tax credits. We do not get "family discounts ". We do not get extra time off from work. And when we go to a restaurant alone and a couple or a "family" comes in when we are ready to order, the family gets taken care of first. We may not bother to go out alone anymore because this city has become SO "family oriented". We watch as American men marry non-citizens/ recent citizens who are more docile and subservient and want children that their country of origin will not allow. This has been a big blow to the advancement of women. In general, we are treated as second class/ unimportant citizens who do not have anything valuable to contribute to the future of society because we did not breed. The right wing religions are not helping by blocking access to birth control and abortions, and YES this is happening in a big way in the U. S. I have had a pharmacy tell me that they could no longer fill my birth control because of religious beliefs of the pharmacist! And this in San Francisco! Thanks again for your newsletter!
> ---Anne Boleyn
I love the pseudonym.
Anne Boleyn: Not that we're free from the iodicies of what you describe, but I find this difficult to credit. I was raised in Montana and am familiar with this culture, but I cannot believe that this is happening in San Francisco. We are home to many single people (such as I, and it would never occur to me to feel defensive or even notice such a thing), childless couples, gay couples, what-have-you. Are you sure this is happening here? I don't believe it--although I do know there are pockets of this sort of nonsense.
On Apr 15, 2011, at 6:58 PM, Nancy Rossman wrote:
> Dear Jack, I will understand if you don't have time to answer. I have a lemon tree in a barrel that is producing lemons and blossoms but the leaves look eaten at the edges and curled and some on top are brown and yellow. I'm getting conflicting advise, any ideas?
You're talking to a hardened gardener, who has turned philosophical in old age. Plants are the base of the food chain and feed thousands of different kinds of critters further up the food chain, passing their energy along. So when I see something like this, I think good, let's pass the energy on up. Screw the lemons.
I'm not being flip. This is the way I see things these days. Homo sapiens has had its way for a very long time; when nature insists on doing things her way, let her.
Anna-Marie Bratton:
> Hi Jake, A thought on utility boxes: I am no lover of utility boxes or graffiti/tagging, but what if AT&T paid local artists to paint mini murals on the boxes - a possible condition for permits to place the boxes and a plus for local artists.
>
> Thanks for the article on Pinnacles: At the impressionable age of 15 I had the good luck to go on a camping trip to Pinnacles - that was when camping was allowed inside the Monument. My experience there was forever imprinted on me and helped cement my enthusiam for nature.
Laarry Brown:
> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/issues/422/the_nature_trail_closest_to_my_house
>
> Sadly, but understandably, the entire piece is not available on-line. I was reminded of this when Ben Pease said his favorite trail was the smallest on his map.
Mary Keitelman:
> When it is said, "they can't take that away from you", who are "they"?
>
> Roberts Burton, Evanston, Illinois, US
> Vote consistently, or you might find out, and you might not like it!
> ~ a voter, Pacifica, CA
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17.
Gay pride and prejudice
Excerpt from interesting book review by Peter Conrad in The Observer Dec 2003
Homosexuality and Civilization by Louis Crompton/Harvard U Press
Strangers: Homosexual Love in the Nineteenth Century by Graham Robb
Fingering Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson in their fussy bachelor pad on Baker Street, he suggests that detection was a gay avocation because it depended on concealment and on an aptitude for deciphering stray clues to hidden motives.* The strangers in Robb's title have a shamanic role; their place outside society entitles them to a "special knowledge" and places them in "an existential avant-garde".
As W.H. Auden put it, sexual acts once considered abnormal have a purpose that goes beyond pleasure: they perform "rites of symbolic magic", inaccessible to the blunt-minded, breeding laity. Who cares about being excommunicated by a moribund church? The pagan gods, whose temple is the body, have never been livelier or more ribaldly holy.
* Shades of J. Edgar Hoover!
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18. From NPR's Marketplace, 12 April 2011
George Soros: What if the world isn't worth saving?
Listen to this Story
In historic Bretton Woods, N.H., the world's financial rock stars gathered once again to save the world. Only this time, they wonder if it's all worth it.
What about Wall Street itself? Does the financial system pass the test? That's the basic idea behind our series Economy 4.0: how to make the global economy, including the financial system, work better for more people.
David Brancaccio: The setting of our conversation was a round table in the grand hotel where debate in 1944 led to the Bretton Woods Agreement, which defined the financial system coming out of World War II. Eighty-year-old George Soros, investor and philanthropist, was part of a new conference he helped sponsor in recent days on what was advertised as "new economic thinking."
I asked Soros about regulation in the wake of the financial collapse but his answer took an unexpected turn.
George Soros: We haven't really decided whether this swollen financial system is a benefit or a detriment, a disease or is that a great source of strength.
Brancaccio: You of all people are wondering if the financial sector creates benefits to society commensurate with its size in the economy?
Soros: Obviously, we need financial services and obviously they are beneficial. But to have 7 or 8 percent of the GDP -- that may be too much!
Soros: The financial markets produce the instabilities, the fluctuations, the volatility against which they also then provide the insurance.
Soros wasn't the only one to pose this almost existential question. Adair Lord Turner is a top financial regulator in Britain. He told the conference the more he thinks about measuring what the financial sector brings to the economy: "The less certain I am about what, if anything, measures are actually telling us."
...
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