I knew it would come to this.
When i moved to San Francisco from Midland, Texas in June of 1975, i joked that during the three days it took to drive here in the UHaul truck i transformed from radical leftist to stodgy conservative….at least so far as how i was viewed by the other residents of my home city.
And then over the years i noticed that unlike normal people who grow more conservative as they age, i was growing more liberal. The only group in which i’ve ever noticed this is supreme court justices, not that they all do and not that i have anything else in common with them.
In any case, i’ve been gradually moving left for the last forty years, and this morning as i studied the San Francisco election results for all the state and local propositions i realized that the tipping point had been reached.
Stop me before i vote again: I am now to the left of San Francisco.
Well, not entirely. On some issues i was more conservative, but in any case i am definitely out of step. I see nothing wrong with asking city employees to pay a bit more toward their pensions and health insurance, so that puts me in the too conservative camp. On the other hand, making it a crime to sit on the damn sidewalk anywhere in the city between the hours of 7:00 AM and 11:00 PM strikes me as something out of an ultra-Orwellian dystopia, so that makes me too liberal.
Well, i never did fit in nowhere.
Here’s a shot from my Electricity of Strangers series. What you can’t see in the pic of this SolarPump is the awning covered with solar panels. Blew me away to see that the company that makes this thing is in Austin, a tiny island of progressive thought in the middle of darkest Texas:
This solar charging station is in the Hayes Valley Farm, a wonderful project transforming the land formerly occupied by the Fell and Oak freeway ramps into a public garden swarming with hardworking young volunteers. Do pitch in. A hand or a donation or something.