Connecting the Dots between Diet and Global Depletion

When I thought I was hosting the SuperBowl 50 gathering at my home, I told friends they didn't need to bring anything.  I'd make a chili, dips,and cake, and it could all be meat-free because I'd just seen Cowspiracy, showing how livestock is the number one cause of global depletion.

They opted to have the gathering somewhere else.  Since I was traveling on BART, someone else brought the chili, and it was vegan and delicious.

But her husband felt the need to "taunt" me with a photograph of steaks.  I'm not sure whether it was to repel me or tempt me, but I figured it gave me license to show him the article of Arnold Schwarzenegger speaking out at the COP21 in Paris:  "Eat less meat."

Why was he the only one who brought up the topic at all?

Anyway, both before and after that  I've written in response to a couple of journalists:

From: Tina Martin [mailto:tina_martin@sbcglobal.net]
Sent: Wednesday, February 03, 2016 8:23 AM
To: Kauffman, Jonathan
Subject: The Perennial

Dear Mr. Kauffman,

I read your article about the Perennial Restaurant with great interest.  It seems incredible that a restaurant serving meat could say it's for zero waste.  Even grass-fed livestock  are unsustainable.

Hasn't this brought up any debate or comments?

An admiring reader,

Tina Martin 

I really appreciated his prompt and thoughtful response:

From: Kauffman, Jonathan [mailto:jkauffman@sfchronicle.com]
Sent: Wednesday, February 3, 2016 9:22 AM
To: Tina Martin
Subject: RE: The Perennial

Hi, Tina —

Thanks for your email! You know, Anthony and Karen think about that a lot. I think their goal is not necessarily eliminating waste, but to reduce their carbon emissions. The ranching practices that Stemple Creek Ranch, their beef supplier, supports may actually turn the land into a carbon sink. (You can read more specifics about it: http://www.theperennialsf.com/projects-1/)

I’d certainly agree that avoiding meat altogether is the most environmentally beneficial stance — and I don’t think Karen or Anthony would disagree — but they’re also trying to make this a successful restaurant rather than purely an ideological one, and for that I think they have decided to serve meat.

Jonathan

--------

Jonathan Kauffman

Staff writer, San Francisco Chronicle

E: jkauffman@sfchronicle.com

P: 415.777.7631

T: @jonkauffman

I thanked him and got his help in locating the article praising the chefs of Paris--shortly after they'd failed to offer enough vegetarian fare at the COP 21 so that vegans and vegetarians had the startling experience of having to go hungry in a country known for its cuisine.

A Message from a Black Psychologist to My White Father on Martin Luther King's Birthday

On MLK Day, before I post pictures on a City Guide Walk through Dogpatch and the staged  reading of a former colleague's play Samaritan, I want to write something about growing up in Columbia, South Carolina, where my father was born and where I lived from the age of 10 through 18, when I graduated from high school in 1964--ten years after the Supreme Court decision making segregated schools unlawful.

At my father's memorial, which lasted 2 1/2 hours, one of the people who spoke was Dr. Moses Rabb, a black psychologist, who said that my father was the first to integrate the University of South Carolina before it was integrated officially.

This was news to me.

But I found Dr. Rabb's written description of this in a book of tributes people wrote in 1997 for my father's birthday.

          Thank you for recruiting and hiring me to your staff in 1960.  By doing so, you not only fulfilled a lifelong dream but enabled me to become one of the early black psychologists in the state.  (This happened just as I was about to become a high school teacher/coach).

            I remember the training seminars that we had where us guys from State park (Now called Crafts Farrow) with our black college degrees had the opportunity to match skill, wit, intelligence and common sense with the people from the other world (S.C. State Hospital, USC and other white school graduates).  You were not only aware of all the underlying issues but stayed on top of them and made sure that we learned from each other what living together was all about.

            Thank you for facilitating the opportunity for me to attend graduate school not only at one of the prestigious institutions, Washington University, but also at what must have been the best terminal Master Degree Programs in clinical psychology—Hays State College.

            I remember how you ran interference for our staff at Crafts Farrow when Dr. Tarbax said we were not qualified to do psychotherapy, that only psychiatrists could do such.  You handled him very gently and by the time you finished, it became clear that he didn’t even know the meaning of the word, and you were able to please him by calling our psychotherapy sessions “Group Therapy.”

            Thank you for teaching me to be a change agent.  Lessons from this area have proved most helpful when, as often is the case, I am surrounded by, if not outright hostile individuals, at least persons who do not have my better interests in mind. 

            I remember you inviting us to SF Psychological Association meetings knowing that there were those who not only opposed our being there, but also resented you for inviting us.  Such was the society in which we lived.

            This letter reminds me of one of those dissertations that you used to write to us.  However, I bring this thesis to a close by saying—THANK YOU MOST OF ALL FOR BEING WHO YOU ARE AND FOR HELPING ME TO BECOME WHO I AM  

I'm really grateful for Dr. Rabb for providing this bit of private history--something, as I say--I didn't know about.  

I hope this shows that even back in the 1960's my white (through no fault of his own) father, who was born in Columbia, SC, the city where he got his undergraduate degree and where he later returned more than once to live and work, believed that BLACK LIVES MATTER.  

Revenant, as in Come Back to Taunt Us

Revenant, as in come back to taunt us, returns not just as the epic film but as the epic escape film.  The hero's escapes ring falser than even the "spiritual" moments.   Whether he's falling down the mountains or rolling down a water fall, the theme song seems to be "Pick yourself up, brush yourself off, and start all over again."   

I liked Leonard di Caprio's acceptance speech at the Golden Globes as much as did any movie goer who's read The Sixth Extinction. 

But it's too bad that the movie he starred in is getting so much more attention than more nuanced,  convincing movies "based on a true story." 

Before the Golden Globe Awards  I was marveling at how many good movies came out late last year.  Brooklyn and Room are as good as the books.  Spotlight and The Big Short both deal more artfully and honestly with problems we need to confront.  The only film that disappointed me was Revenant, which I saw only because it had been nominated.   I hate to think of how many not very good movies I've seen over the year because they've been nominated for--and sometimes won--the Oscar!

An Open Letter to Emily Steward and an Ode to Squalor

Dear Emily Stewart,

Thank you for helping your readers begin the year avoiding the task of writing self-defeating (and self-defeated)  resolutions.  Your example of the futility of vowing to get our home in order resonated with me.  Years ago I realized that if I have 15 minutes to clean up a mess, I use the time instead to create another.

It's something I've put on my list of things I simply will not give up or will never get around to doing.    I will not give up creating more clutter.  I will never get around to cleaning up the clutter I create.

Right now, for example, instead of writing to you, I could be cleaning up the mess of piles that seem to have merged, but instead of eliminating the clutter, I'm writing an ode to it:

Ode to Squalor

dedicated to Emily Stewart, author of "Resolutions Be Damned!"

I'd pay to have more storage space for clutter--worth each dollar.

Instead I teach me not to mind living in this squalor.

Stepping over piles around is something I surmise

That develops balance and also is weight-bearing exercise.

"Pretend that you're normal.  Pretend that you're normal! Keep yourself at bay."

This is the mantra I say to cope.  (Life piles are in my way.)

"It's okay not to be normal," he says. "As long as you consider

The comfort of friends who are"-- a thought that makes me kind of bitter.

I look at this him, this son of mine, withdrawing the welcome mat.

"I thought that I had chosen my friends a lot better than that."

Thanks again, and happy, messy, self-indulgent New Year,

Tina Martin

Raise Your Glasses in a Toast, and Then Put Them Right Back On

Young people know how cool eyeglasses are.  They buy them with clear lenses just so they can sport the awesome frames.

People who've worn glasses since an early age because they need them to see also keep them on in a way that shows a sane acceptance of the eyeglasses as part of the image they project. and an  appreciation of the images the eyeglasses let them see!

And then there are people like me who associate glasses with getting older because our eyesight was perfect until we turned forty-five and suddenly Walgreen's was no longer developing film clearly and the mimeograph machine at school was making blurred copies.  (You can tell  how long ago I turned forty-five.)

We are the idiots who whip off our glasses every time a camera comes near.

We are the fools who memorized Dorothy Parker's verse, "Men don't make passes/At girls who wear glasses" and still remember those lines even when we're forgetting so many other things.

I am the fool who wrote this poem:

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.

The foolish part of this is the concept that people look better without their glasses.  I adore My Best Friend in Fifth Grade who, when she sees a camera coming, puts ON her glasses.  She knows she looks better with them on.

Now I'm just keeping mine on--all the time, even for photos.

And I'm writing verses like this (to the tune of "Sixteen Going On Seventeen")

I am sixty-nine going on seventy, my eyesight's getting weak.

Let's raise eyeglasses

To no more classes  

We'd rather sing than speak.    

And I've been taking pictures of raised glasses every chance I get.

So...let's raise our glasses to eyeglasses...and then let's see!

Why Everyone Should Marry a Plumber and a Tile Guy (as well as an auto-mechanic)

All my beautiful bathroom needs is a new old valve for the bathtub (where I take the SF equivalent of the sponge bath I took in Tonga, where there was no running water and we realized the preciousness of what we drew from the well).  But they don't make them anymore.

So since January of this year, I've been trying to get a tile guy and a plumber scheduled for the same day or two so once the beautiful tile is removed I won't have a big gape in the wall.

In the meantime, I had a big problem with my kitchen faucet,  and when my local plumber couldn't come right away, I called in a plumber from Ben Franklin, and they came right over.  But guess how much they charged for switching my old faucet with a new one--a task that took them ten minutes?

(I just had a tile guy guess, and you know how people try to go way over so you won't feel bad the way they try to go way under when guessing your age?  He said "Three hundred dollars.")

  They charged me $538.00!

They said they'd be back soon to take care of the bathtub valve.  That was in June.  They came back today, the last day of September.

In the meantime, my regular plumber gave me a lower estimate, as did the tile guy, and a friend who owns 7 houses and knows about this kind of repair arrived yesterday and said they shouldn't be removing the tiles at all but should be going in through the wall behind.

So I called in advance to alert them to my reconsidering.

The plumber and the tile guy from Ben Franklin just left.  The told me that the spout comes out directy in the middle--between the hot and the cold--so they can't just open it up from the back side.  The plumber has to move the spout up.  The tile guy has to chip the tile.  But they still need to mess with the east wall in the dining room, which they say is either sheet rock or plaster.  My friend-who-owns-7-houses says it's plaster.

But she slept through all this.

I told the tile man that I had a second "bid" for $200 to $400 less, depending upon whether he can save the tile, and the tile guy said the tile can't be saved and I should be careful about hiring someone who doesn't do good work.  I said I have confidence in both tile men, but I have a preference for the lower price.  (That's when I asked them to guess how much I paid for the kitchen faucet.)

And that's why we should all marry a plumber and a tile guy as well as an auto-mechanic...although I have to say, knock on steel, that I haven't had any car trouble for a long, long time!

Why

All