Evicted from the Tenderloin Museum!

No time now to tell this poignant tale, but I was evicted from the Tenderloin Museum on their opening day--bounced, asked to leave!  I was behaving myself, not making any demands at all or creating a public disturbance. This was after I'd written an e-letter to Randy Shaw to praise his book on the Tenderloin and he had responded so he knew I was a supporter.  I'd also made a $100.00 donation (though I realize later that there was a complication with the Penpal account).

I left but moved back in later.

Lack of Clarity in the Jury Duty Summons

 Those summoned can call beginning the Friday before their summons date to find out whether they need to go in to the courthouse, according to the Summons for Jury Service I received.

I called and got the message that I should call Monday, July 20,2015 after 4:30 PM  "to confirm  that you are required to report."  (It should be "whether you are required to report," I think.  

Anyway, since they didn't say "You are required to report on Monday..." I  decided I was free on Monday, and a friend whose San Francisco City Walk tour I wanted to go on  told me he thought I was right. 

But another friend thought I should double check, so I went online to the website given in the summons,  www.sfsuperiorcourt.org.

The summons said, "Click on the Jury Duty Instructions Link and look for the instruction for our 3-digit group number, which is located in the upper left corner of this summons."

But there was no link saying "Jury Duty Instructions."  There was a "Jury Duty" link, but when I clicked on it, I saw no link for instructions.  I chose "directions," which turned out to be how to get there.

I searched for a "contact us" link but didn't find one, so I'm resorting to blogging it!

Tea and Justice, Tea and Sisters Tea Parlor, Accommodating All Diets

I've been reading Tea and Justice, a perfect accompaniment for my pre-dawn two-hour reading buffet with tea.  This morning I got to thinking about this:

We now have special menus for our guests requesting Vegetarian Tea Trays, Gluten-free Tea Trays, Dairy-free Tea Trays, and Vegan Tea Trays.

http://sistersteaparlor.com/?page_id=80

And that's a place in Kentucky!!!

The Way of Tea and Justice has an extended title:  Rescuing the World's Favorite Beverage from Its Violent History.   It's written by a minister named Becca Stevens.
http://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/rev-becca-stevens/the-way-of-tea-and-justice/9781455519026/

Open Letter on The Tenderloin and Sunday Street

I'm glad that  Jill Tucker reported on Sunday Streets in the Tenderloin for the San Francisco Chronicle.  I just wish the headlines had been a bit different.  Instead of "Tenderloin's respite from the seedy side," I wish it had been "The Tenderloin shows a changing face." 

Back in the days when I thought SRO meant  Standing Room Only, I went to the Tenderloin only for shows at the Golden Gate and the Exit theater--and maybe for a dip into McDonald's Dirty, Poorly Lit Place for Books at 48 Turk Street. 

But now I know that SRO also  means Single Room Occupancy--something I first learned from a Laotian immigrant in my class at City College when, drawing a map of his neighborhood, he asked me for the English word for "look at naked lady."   Peep shows, the word he was looking for, are much less prevalent in the Tenderloin now than are people like him and his children, refugees who started moving into SROS in the 1970s, after what the Vietnamese call The American War.   In fact, according to the Sunday Streets web site, the Tenderloin houses the highest number of families with children in San Francisco.

I was in the Tenderloin on Sunday with other faculty and staff of City College of San Francisco when a Tenderloin resident pointed towards Eddy Street and said, "School closed!"  We told her that, yes, 750 Eddy Street was closed, but there was another campus.  "Too far!"  She said, and we understood that she didn't yet know about the new location of the Civic Center at 1170 Market Street. 

City College, like Recreation and Parks' Sunday Streets, tries to serve the people in every neighborhood.

When I started volunteering for the CCSF enrollment campaign, which included community based organizations in the Tenderloin, I notice the banners proclaiming, "409 HISTORIC BUILDINGS IN 33 BLOCKS.  YEAH, WE'RE PROUD" beside another banner saying "LIVING IN THE TEN."  Now I've read Randy Shaw's book The Tenderloin and know more about those historic buildings and some good reasons for the residents to feel pride instead of scorn.   Last Sunday I saw a group of people painting "Living in the Ten" in big letters. 

Just as we want to get out the word that City College is open and accredited and has a new location for the center on Eddy Street that was closed so abruptly at the beginning of the year, I'll bet the Tenderloin would like it to be known that they now have a Safe Passage program, leading children on a yellow brick road from home to school and back.  On Sunday Streets I followed that route, more or less, and saw several beautiful community gardens including The Tenderloin National Park on Ellis Street.  I also saw  the site for the extension of the 826 Valencia writing project  at 172 Golden Gate near Leavenworth and the site for the Tenderloin Museum, which opens this Thursday at 398 Eddy Street.

The Tenderloin really does have a changing face and a fascinating history.  

Seventy Is an Awkward Age--I'll Be Beautiful at Eighty

I saw Rita Moreno, 83,  in the newspaper this morning, and I realize that I may not be attractive again until I'm in my eighties.  Seventy is an awkward age--past the age of youth but not deep enough into old age for acceptance and adoration.  

Then I thought of that exchange from Barefoot in the Park, which I just looked up:

Once a month

              I try to make pretty young girls nervous

              just to keep my ego from going out.

              I'll save you a lot of anguish.

              I'm  ... I'm    years old

              and a thoroughly nice fellow.

              Well, I'm glad to hear that.

              I wish I were    years older.

              Older?

              Dirty old men seem to get away with a lot more.

              I'm still at the awkward age.

This version took out his age, but I looked it up!  This character, Valesco, is 58!!!!  He wishes that he were 68--a year younger than I am now.    But Neil Simon, born in 1927, was only 36 in 1963 when he wrote this play.  To him 68 seemed like what eighty really is!  Maybe now, at 88, Neil Simon is old enough to "get away with a lot more."

July Headlines I Can't Recycle Yet

I'm once again in the process of recycling the print newspaper that takes about two hours of my morning every day.

I just can't put the pages in the recycling bin before recording what's in the news:

"22 die in ethnic clashes in southern towns in Algeria."  I'm now in touch with two of my former students, and one of them made reference to awful things going on.  Every time I see a crisis worded in terms of religion, I wonder whether it's really political, but the powers that be want us to think of political clashes as religious ones so we'll be more dismissive of legitimate political complaints and fear "them" and be willing to kill them because they hate us for our freedom.  But that's just the way my mind works.

"Mountain lion spotted roaming in parts of S.F."  A puma was seen in Sea Cliff!  I need to contact our friend, the host of our View and Chew group of Francophones/Francophiles, who lives there, where we go once a month.  (This month we--if not that puma--will go twice a month because in addition to our usual Sunday morning with amuses-gueules and Village francais, we're viewing Manon des sources.)  The puma has also been seen near Lincoln and Washington blvd. in the Presidio, on the 1000 block of Gough Street, and near Lake Merced.

"4 East Bay community colleges hit by sanctions" reports Nanette Asimov on July 9.

There's a "Bayview land battle."

"El Nino forecast raises hopes for a wet winter"--warming sea surface and emerging equatorial winds.

Today there was an editorial against the cap on reserves in the school district, saying that it benefits only teacher unions.  I see an article from yesterday, July 10, by Jill tucker reporting "School trustees oppose cap on reserves."

On South Carolina "Confederate flag will be set to the 'relic room.'"

Toxins from algae contaminated the drinking water for 400,000 people in northwestern Ohio and southeastern Michigan.

"beloved camp in peril" is about Camp Mather,which is of grave concern to those who make a tradition of going there because  the state says San Francisco has to stop drawing water at four spots in the Sierra, and one of them is the sole source of water for Camp Mather.  (I sympathize with those families, but I also think it would be good to educate the kids going to that camp on the preciousness of water, and I hope that opportunity won't be lost in favor of their feeling of entitlement.)

"Remembering the 'Forgotten War'" is an editoral about the Korean War Memorial that has been designed and maybe soon be there to "remember the suffering of the Korean people when invaders poured across the 38th parallel."  (My father would have considered the US on another anti-communist crusade, to be the invaders.)

"S.f. police didn't probe gun theft until pier killing" reports on the fact that the murder weapon in the hands of the undocumented immigrant was left in the car of a federal agent.

I'll be back with more headlines after I add these pages to the recycling bin!

Xe Sands, a Voice I Really Like

I've been listening to Euphoria on Audible books, and I liked the female reader enough to look up her name, which sounded like X-E Zanze.  It turned out to be Xe Sands--information much easier to find on the Audible website than are the translators of their books.  (My students once had a problem with Kindred because when I asked who was narrating the story, they heard on the recorded version that it was "narrated by"...I meant who was telling the story in the written form.  I wish Audible would say "Read by...")

Anyway, what I like about Xe Sands' voice is the natural, creamy quality that catches in a really lovely way.  I'd like to know how she would describe her own voice.  I'll bet she's gotten a lot of compliments on it.

Bring SUV Drivers in for Questioning by Mark Miller

This is too brilliant a column not to be online!  It came to my attention in 2001, and I used it as an extra-credit reading assignment to extend our unit on SUVs. It's one of the best post-9/11 pieces I've read. Friday, October 19, 2001 Bring SUV Drivers in for Questioning By Mark Miller Special to The Examiner Attorney General Ashcroft wants us to be on the lookout for suspicious activity. We're the guardians of our homeland, he says — America's first line of defense. Responding to my country's call, I've turned a watchful eye on my fellow Angeleños, alert for activities hostile to The American Way. At the risk of alarming the millions who read this column and rely upon it for important civil defense tips, I must report that we are completely infiltrated by people whose activities pose a "credible threat" to our national well-being. This became apparent on my first reconnaissance patrol. Slipping unnoticed into Beverly Hills, I observed hundreds of people masquerading as shoppers. Since the current economic slump began, experts have warned that if we don't keep buying lots of stuff that we don't need, but instead unpatriotically put our money in savings accounts, America's Ponzi scheme economy could collapse. As I shadowed the "shoppers," I saw that while they seemed fascinated by items such as $2,500 blouses, $400 bras, $1,400 loafers and $25,000 wristwatches, few of them bought anything. These people must be put on watch lists. Next I penetrated Santa Monica, where I was shocked to find legions of saboteurs disguised as "soccer moms" and "dads" and driving military-sized trucks their propaganda organs misrepresent as "sport utility vehicles." Political analysts have warned for years that our insatiable and increasing appetite for oil has made America a junkie nation, as desperately dependent upon Middle Eastern suppliers as heroin addicts are on their dealers. Clearly then, everyone who drives a hyper-bloated SUV should be taken in for questioning — particularly the ones whose vehicles have those massive front bumpers with no apparent utility save for pushing people in electric cars over cliffs. Posing as a "Starbucks customer" sitting at a sidewalk table, I spied on SUV movements. I noted their drivers' confident airs and arrogant pride at driving three- ton vehicles that get as little as 10 miles per gallon ("I can afford it!") and whose sluggish acceleration has been shown to slow city traffic through controlled intersections by as much as 30 percent. Ironically these are the vehicles that in L.A. since September 11th most often display American flags. Pretending to read the Santa Monica Mirror, I watched an Enemy of America back her Ford Excursion into a parking space and knock over two sidewalk tables, scattering latte drinkers like panicked tundra pigs. It was not lost on your vigilant reporter that this terrorist "mom" knew only how to drive the vehicle, not park it. Posing as a "typical upscale homemaker," right down to the rolled-up exercise mat under her arm, she professed "shock" at the toppled tables and then darted into a "yoga studio" — which judging from the number of SUVs crowding its parking lot is clearly a terrorist cell. I expanded my surveillance by enlisting operatives in West Hollywood, who alert me to others who threaten our freedoms. One reported in on Wednesday, asking if I thought her landlord, who raised the rent of an upstairs gay couple from $2,10 0 to $3,000 to force them out, and then rented the same unit to a heterosexual couple for $2,300, might be in league with the terrorists. I assured her that he is, although he might not be aware of it himself.  She has alerted the proper authorities. Security is heavy at the West L. A. Federal Building, where this week I saw a young woman in a new black BMW cut into a parking space behind an elderly couple backing their tired Oldsmobile into it — a move that in the Old West probably would have gotten her shot. Ignoring them, she popped out of her car and strode away, all purpose. Her sweatshirt was emblazoned "UCLA School of Business." No, I am not making this up. Maybe she'll join the ranks of those MBA Talibans whose predatory interpretation of capitalism ascribes to the Greed is Good doctrine — the ammoral opportunism that spurs American companies to sell DDT, the environmentally devastating insecticide long banned in the USA, everywhere else around the world. Maybe she'll find a market for her skills at one of the big tobacco companies that still give away cigarettes to kids all across the globe, every year hooking a few hundred thousand more. Since September 11th the US has worked hard to tell the world what good people we are. And we are, by and large. But meanwhile the actions of the un-Americans among us are sending out another message — and actions, as we know, speak louder than words.

Mark Miller is a journalist and screenwriter in Los Angeles.

His column appears Fridays.

Contact Mark Miller at mhmllr@att.net

San Francisco Examiner

988 Market Street

San Francisco, California 94102

Main: 415.359.2600

Fax: 415.359.2766

Address Your Audience as Your Grandchildren

Last night at the RPCV (Return Peace Corps Volunteers) storytelling gathering, I realized that hearing the "Important Date in Peace Corps History" story wasn't the same as reading it in print--because I'm there looking like the grandmother of the woman experiencing it!  Getting it in print, the reader could see the young me, but hearing it from me was another experience--maybe a little creepy!  Who was this 69-year-old woman acting out the antics of a recent college graduate?  Here's part of the story:

I liked being trapped in the rain with Jim.  I started singing a song from The Fantastiks.  “Soon It’s Gonna Rain” described finding shelter in the rain and ended with these lines:

And we'll not complain
If it never stops at all.
We'll live and love
Within our own four walls.

            I loved musicals and knew a show tune for every occasion.

            But on that occasion a very nice Filipino-American couple saw us from their living room window, and the husband came across the street with an umbrella and invited us into their home.   They gave us clothes to wear while our wet ones were in their dryer.  They also invited us back to have dinner with them and to meet a friend who did authentic Hawaiian dancing.

            Were Jim and I a couple? I wondered.  That felt good—even if he wasn’t a foreigner!

            Then came our final days in Hawaii—in Honolulu, where we were given three days—like a furlough-- before leaving the United States to serve in a foreign land.    We travelled as a group, of course, but we were sometimes given moments and even hours alone.

I've decided to address the audience as my grandchildren.  I'll say something like this:

Okay, grandchildren, gathering 'round!  Grandmommy's gonna tell you a story.  That's what grandmommies are for.  And this story is about an important date in Peace Corps history!  It's one I went on in January 1970, and the guy who took me on this date said it was the best date he'd ever had!  No, I'm sorry!  This is not a plot spoiler, but it wasn't your granddaddy though he and I have had some pretty good dates too.

This one began in Hawaii.  (and on it will go)

I am no longer the Kate Winslet Rose in The Titanic.  I am now closer to the Gloria Stuart Old Rose.

How to Prepare an Old Love for the Old You 40 Years Later

Making arrangement to meet a former boyfriend I hadn't seen for forty years, I felt the need to be more realistic about what he would see.  This would not be a romantic encounter; I have a meque--mejor que un esposo--and I want to be monogamous.  (Not to mention the self-consciousness that would come with being with a man who hadn't watched me age grad-u-al-ly!)  Of course, I'd sent photos, but I'd always chosen the most flattering pictures of me.  Now he'd be seeing the me outside the frame of the carefully chosen photos.

I can face myself in the mirror every morning without a problem.  I have a healthy, un-neurotic acceptance of age and aging.  I am not an ageist or a lookist.  But when I catch my reflection by accident in my iPhone, that un-neurotic acceptance makes an abrupt exit and I'm left with a look of horror having seen that horrific image that is NOT the one in my bathroom mirror and certainly not the one in the carefully chosen photos.

 I was writing in French, and I wanted the vocabulary to describe the new old me.  I Googled "description d'une vielle femme" (description of an old woman) and got a description of a woman of 87 who was méchante, arrogante, toujours énervée et ne parle a personne."  Mean, arrogant, always upset and never speaking to anyone."  The passage went on to say that she had lived alone since the death of her husband and seemed to carry the weight of the world on her shoulders.  She had a skinny frame, a rounded back, and she hobbled along the streets of the town bent over her cane.  He face gave proof of the difficulties she'd faced in life.  It was lined, wrinkled like a dried apple.  Her color was like dried sheepskin, which made her wrinkles and lines stand out.

Well, maybe that didn't quite describe me at 17 years younger, but it certainly gave me something to look forward to.  

So...I Googled the French for "description of a woman of 70 years" and got news about the disappearance of a woman of 70 in the Haute-Vienne area of France whose husband had reported her unexplained disappearance, leaving home in her pajama bottoms (not top?) without her bag or her cell phone.  

That didn't help me with my description since it's not my pajama bottoms that have aged.  

So I kept looking and saw that in Japan they'd found the corpse of a 70-year old woman in a suitcase left in a train station in Tokyo.    

Then I found the news report on a 70-year-old woman whose leg had gotten caught between the train and the platform.  (This ended happily; 12 people on the train used their weight together to dislodge her leg and save her!) 

Finally I gave up trying to describe myself, but I told him that I now wear glasses. 

A couple of years ago I wrote a poem about glasses:

He took off his glasses, I thought, to appear

More handsome to me.  But now I fear

He took off his glasses to see me less clear.

Another friend, Beth, and I took our friend Shehla to tea on her birthday at a place called The Secret Garden, right across from Golden Gate Park.  I suggested that they pose behind the three-tiered tea tray, which they did, resulting in these adorable pictures, giving them hats of sweet cakes and fruit and collars of tea sandwiches:

 When it was my turn, I couldn't stand what I saw there in my digital camera play back!  In addition to the wear and tear that comes with age, I had a sty, and I knew that my eye looked awful.  But Shehla and Beth said they couldn't tell the difference between one eye and another, so I guess both eyes look sick or...they didn't want to put on their glasses!

Interrupting a Monologue to Have a Conversation

In the past week, when I've interjected something in a friend's narrative when I thought we were having a conversation, I've seen that the person wanted to finish her monologue before having any input from me.  This happened with both a friend and a relative.  (I'm not implying that relatives can't be  friends.)

I've been guilty of high-jacking a bit of conversation and taking it off into an unplanned area against the pilot's wishes, but this wasn't one of those times. 

In both cases, I was trying to interject something that I thought would really help the other person.  I thought my interjection should that I was being attentive and concerned.  

But who knows?  Maybe if I had a recording of the conversation, I'd hear things differently.  

More on this tomorrow.

To Indent or Not To Indent

After years of considering indenting a moral law, I've been told not to do it for the piece I've written on a CCSF student.  I was obedient, but I remained curious, so I just looked it up:

But one thing I recently learned is that to properly format something you want to publish, you should never use tab to intent. I know, weird. And it's not 3 spaces either. Right click on your piece, and under the heading Special put "first line" by "0.5" And this will automatically indent for you whenever you hit enter at the end of the paragraph.