Lucky Super Market Lakeshore: A Study in Contrasts

I sometimes get to Lucky Supermarket at Lakeshore a minute or two before it opens.  The woman who opens it almost scowls when she comes to the door.  She doesn't make eye contact or even look my way.  Once, when I said "Good morning," she said "Good morning" back, but not today.  When I said, "Good morning," she just turned around and walked away.

In contract , another employee there is extremely friendly and helpful.  Two days ago she went out of her way to help me find two products.  One was No-Moo non-dairy ice cream, which I  needed because I'd eat a whole pint of it the previous day, celebrating how warm the weather was and how good the chocolate mint No-Moo was.  She made a real effort to find it.

I also asked her about pimenton de la vera, and she looked it up on her smart phone and helped me find the smoky Paprika after we figured out that was it!

Today she greeted me with a pint carton of No-Moo in her hand and told me there was a close-out sale.  "When I heard they were having a close-out sale, I said, 'That's the ice cream that woman was asking about the other day.'"

I told her how impressed I was.  "You're exemplary!" I said.

Then I headed to Aisle 12 and got 4 cartons.

Hand-Up instead of Hand Out.

Here's what I put on Facebook today:


You may feel the way I do as you pass people asking for handouts on the street--awful if you pass them by and awful if you give them a dollar (tho' $2.00 for Street Sheets is okay).
I usually tell them that I don't give money to people on the streets, just to organizations, and that can sound very phony, as a man asking money on the street told me recently. So thanks to Robert Liu (reporting on another outreach organization), I found out about HandUp and bought their gift card, which just came in the mail.

Children Shelters and the Summer of Love

What does the Summer of Love have to do with children's shelters?

That's the question I want to answer here now that I've answered another one I'd been asking myself for years:

Why don't I have any recollection of the Summer of Love?

I now realize that that was the summer I did volunteer work in Mexico through Amigos Anónimos.

"Damn!"  I thought.  "I missed out on The Summer of Love!"

Instead of getting high and psychedelic,  I wound up taking care of three newborn babies at La Casa de Mama Rosa,  an orphanage in Zamora, Michoacán.

Four months later I got this newspaper clipping from a Spanish woman who worked there too.  She'd written in Spanish "Doing your shifts until you come back."

I never went back. 

 I finished college, got my teaching credential, joined the Peace Corps, trained in Hawaii, and went to Tonga.  Then to Spain.  Then to Algeria.  But I never returned to visit these three babies.
What kind of mother was I?!

The next time I held a baby was when I was married and had my own.

  When I realized this week that my babies were now fifty, I Googled "orfanato de Zamora, Michoacán" and found several news releases from 2014.  

La Casa de Mama Rosa had been raided, and Mama Rosa had been arrested.

Before I read more than the lead-in paragraph, I searched for a group picture with her--the woman in the plaid dress.  At the time I, twenty-years-old, thought she was about fifty, but from the newspaper article I see that she was only thirty-two at the time--just a decade older than I was but old enough to have already been written up as"The Most Unforgettable Person I've Ever Met" in the Spanish edition of the Reader's Digest.  

 Mama Rosa was a kind woman, and I think she had very good intentions... and inadequate resources.

Then I read the article about the raid and her arrest, and I thought back fifty years.

Of course, I didn't take care of the babies every day all day, but I took my hours seriously.  As a college student in San Francisco I baby-sat even more than I dated--a lot--and was so determined to do a good job that I read Dr. Spock!  I knew it was important for babies to be held, and that's what I did--fed them and held them, hour after hour.

Now when I read the SF Chronicle's features on shelters for foster children, I feel ashamed that I didn't keep up with those babies and with what was happening there at the orphanage.  I look at my diary from 1967 and see that I wrote a lot more about the Mexican guy I met at the Anthropology Museum in Mexico City than I wrote about the babies.

All I did was hold them while I was there.

But in a way, shamefully lax though I was afterwards, when I think of holding them, I think that maybe I didn't  miss out on the Summer of Love after all.

La Colectiva: A Chance for Domestic Workers to Age with Dignity

I'm really grateful to the woman who works for me once a month--when my home really gets a good cleaning, but I've also been aware that I provide no benefits, and I assume the other people she works for don't either. 

Recently I got her and me two tickets to the Quinceañera of La Colectiva, a group she belongs to whose theme is "Aging with Dignity," something we all hope to do. 

The people who help us in our homes (and 93% are women!) are often care-takers, work they do lovingly and well. Now we need to think about who is going to take care of them.

Here Luz and I are with a mother and son.  She spoke on her dream-come-true, being an entrepreneur, and this was the eve of his graduation from Presidio Middle School.

Here Luz and I are with Jane Kim, the SF Supervisor who led the Free City (College) cause.

Supervisor Hillary Ronen spoke--with enthusiasm that sounded genuine.

Peter Dale Scott, David Talbot, Robert Sheer on Trump vs. The Deep State

I found the Bay Area Book Festival very engaging this past Saturday, June 3, when Robert Scheer, David Talbot, and Peter Dale Scott spoke on Trump vs. the Deep State. I worry that Trump's conflict with the FBI and CIA will give them a good name. We need to remember what Bill Moyers alerted us to in the 1980's: There is a shadow government fueled by money and special interests, and democracy is at stake! I am now reading two books by Peter Dale Scott, who is very scholarly--always giving his sources--and convincing! He's 88-years-old, which helps obliterate age-based assumptions!

I want to write him a fan letter, but all I could find online was his Facebook page.  I wrote him a long message, but I know that messages are often not seen.


On Saturday I asked David Talbot why no one ever mentioned Bill Moyers, who had first alerted us to the secret/shadow government, and he said something about Bill Moyers' past as a defender and denier.  But that doesn't seem relevant to me.  

I sent this e-mail to David Talbot. 

Dear Mr. Talbot,

I found your panel discussion very engaging last Saturday.  I liked the way you greeted us, saying that you assumed we were all there either because we're Trump supporters or members of the Deep State.

I asked you about Bill Moyers omission in every book I've read on the deep state.  I'm attaching a photo of his book The Secret Government:  The Constitution in Crisis, and he was the one who first alerted me to the idea that we had a shadow government with the TV specials he did in the 1980's.  (In fact, Conservatives wanted to withdraw funding for PBS because of his specials!)

I am fascinated by your Devil's Chessboard, which I have in print (the copy you signed for the JoMama Book Club) and on Audible.   (I read your column on Strangers in Their Own Land aloud  to my son when he was here from New York.  He's the other member of the JoMama Book Club.)

I'm also a huge fan of Peter Dale Scott.  (His being so articulate and sharp at 88 should give us all hope for the future although I wish I were as sharp NOW as he is.)  I've also collected articles by Robert Scheer over the years.

But I'm startled that Bill Moyers is never mentioned in books on the Dark State.  Regardless of what he did when he was working for LBJ, he deserves credit for warning us about "cold warriors," the CIA, the Imperial presidency, and the "deep meaning/cause" of Watergate and the Iran-Contra Affair.

I saw the encouraging "David Talbot will return" in yesterday's SF Chronicle!

Tina Martin