California faces a conundrum. We want to radically reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), principally by replacing fossil fuels used in transportation and buildings with electricity generated by renewable energy. Yet, the state’s electricity prices are among the country’s highest and still rising. Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) customers pay roughly 80 percent more per kilowatt-hour…
Sad to say, we’ve drifted into a world in which this editor of a half-century old neighborhood newspaper feels a twinge of fear when contemplating writing about redistricting municipal supervisorial districts. To characterize the debate over how best to right size district lines in the face of population changes as “heated” would be akin to…
In Mendocino County, 523 acres of rugged forest is studded with the ghostlike stumps of ancient redwoods harvested during a logging boom that eliminated 90 percent of the species on the West Coast. But about 200 acres were spared the saw, still dense with old-growth redwoods. The land was the hunting, fishing and ceremonial grounds…
I had a vision, or perhaps it was a dream, of my death. I was sitting by myself on a Northern California cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. The place was vaguely familiar, reminiscent of the Marin Headlands. I’d scrambled down a steep slope to settle onto a flat perch with a view of forever. Time…
Last month Elizabeth Holmes was found guilty of defrauding investors out of a boatload of cash by falsely claiming that her company, Theranos, would transform blood testing with technology that relied on just a tiny sample pricked from a patient’s finger. The centrality of blood in this tale of greed, hubris, and by-gum-I’m-going-to-change-the-world-with-two-straws-and-a-rock – along…
The Nazis discovered the family hiding in France and put them on a train to Auschwitz; mom, dad and two sisters. “We argued the entire way,” said the sole sibling survivor. “About whose fault it was we were captured.” The rest of her family were gassed to death immediately after they arrived at the death…
Teeth are strange. We’re born with the seeds of two sets, the first marching forth as we become toddlers, then, having done their duty, falling out and being replaced in adolescence. Nothing else in the body works quite this way. Skin constantly sheds and is replenished. Hair and nails need to be trimmed. None…
Relationships, especially long ones, are full of small battles, struggles over whose preferences, or neuroses, will win the day. Couples debate whether lights should be on or off, windows shut against the night air or left ajar to allow refreshing breezes to drift in. Bedroom doors shouldn’t be agape lest an intruder enter the house,…
Until last year the San Francisco Public Utility Commission (SFPUC) was run by Harlan L. Kelly, Jr., a civil engineer appointed by Mayor Ed Lee. Lee, who died in 2017, was fond of talking about the “city family,” which some believe included a familial attitude towards quid pro quo favors. Kelly resigned in 2020 in…
The federal government has finally joined the State of California in a spirited effort to vastly reduce anthropogenic discharges that are fostering a hotter, drier, planet. The state and fed plan to forestall the worst effects of human-induced climate change by squeezing fossil fuels out of our electricity system within the next 15 years, deploying…
The monkeys popped into my head, as if they’d been waiting for the right moment to swing down from the tangled jungle of my subconscious. I’d last seen them many years ago; a row of thumb high wood carved chimpanzees that sat on my father’s desk. One held his hands over his eyes, another over…
“You got a mortgage without meeting with anyone in person,” my brother-in-law, Harvey, asked, incredulously. “From a bank you’ve never been to?” It was the end of the 20th Century. I was buying my first property, an exhausted two-flat building on Kansas Street. I’d found a low-interest rate mortgage with HSBC by paging through the…
The virus-fog that’s enveloped the world will slowly dissipate, cleared away by its inability to reach masked, sheltered, and increasingly inoculated or already-infected recruits. As we emerge from our seclusion, like so many gophers looking for our shadows, what will we see? What do we want to see? Many of us will surface from near…
My wife, Debbie, and I were invited to a small dinner party last fall, to be held on an outdoor deck in the North Bay. Our host had assured us that he was COVID-compliant, but it turned out he was COVID casual, greeting us without a mask at his front door before ushering us to…
Polling data suggests that the Democratic Party will sweep the election. Joe Biden will become the 46th American president, the U.S. Senate will tilt Blue by a couple of seats, and the U.S. House of Representatives will remain solidly Democratic, though it’ll take time for all votes to be counted and legal skirmishes resolved. …
Voting is the heart of democracy, an opportunity for citizens to choose their leaders, and adopt or reject new laws and tax measures. According to Thomas Paine, “The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which other rights are protected. To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery,…
Time never appears directly, but rather presents itself in an array of costumes, some invisible. The sun rises and sets, signaling the passage of day into night back into day. Coastal fog chases summer heat inland, reminding San Franciscans to don their seasonal hoodies. The clock, tracking the sun and the moon, tells us it’s…
The road to racial equality will continue to be long and difficult. To get where most of us want to go we’ll need to learn how to (re)see things with fresh eyes, become much more mindful of our actions, and make considerable sacrifices. The alternative to taking this journey, though, is to live in an…
The Population Bomb, written by Stanford University Professor Paul R. Ehrlich and his wife, Anne Ehrlich, in 1968, predicted that overpopulation-induced global famines would boil up well before the end of the 20th Century. At the time Earth had 3.5 billion inhabitants. Since then population has doubled, to 7.8 billion. While there have been localized…
“During negative tides you can walk along the seashore all the way from Muir Beach to Pirate’s Cove,” the old-timer said. “I did it once with my dog, when he was a pup. Had to carry him over boulders the size of haystacks.” I was smitten. Pirate’s Cove is a small Marin County beach decorated…
Over the years I’ve periodically encountered cheek kissers; people whose preferred greeting consists of a series of puckered lipped head maneuvers. When I was younger the kissers were usually someone’s girlfriend, a “glamourous” White girl from Seattle or Los Angeles who pronounced “Nicaragua” as if ordering a fancy cocktail and blurted out “Guatemala” so that…
Picture yourself on a transcontinental flight, economy class, sitting in a middle seat with a weary mom trying to console her crying baby on one side of you, and a large man who is intently staring at his blank video screen on the other. A bit of turbulence starts, then intensifies, the plane bouncing up…
Last month I was privileged to travel to Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island. The isle is a speck in the vastness of the Pacific Ocean, 2,190 miles from the Chilean coast. The Pitcairn Islands are 1,290 miles away; Tahiti, 2,700 miles distant. It’s one of the world’s most isolated inhabited islands, with perhaps…
My wife, Debbie, and I often marvel at the steady stream of airline mileage points we collect just because we purchase items through our credit cards. The freebie enables us to periodically fly to Michigan to visit Debbie’s family at little or no cost. It’s a regular reminder of the adage “the rich get richer.” …
Over the years I’ve learned that how I experience a place or activity is greatly influenced by what I bring to it. This was certainly the case on a recent trip my wife, Debbie, and I took to Nashville after dropping off our only child, Sara, at the University of Puget Sound to start her…