July 2012

Last week President Obama gave a speech in which he said:

We’ve already made a trillion dollars’ worth of cuts.  We can make some more cuts in programs that don’t work, and make government work more efficiently…We can make another trillion or trillion-two, and what we then do is ask for the wealthy to pay a little bit more …

There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me, because they want to give something back.  They know they didn’t -look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own.  You didn’t get there on your own.  I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart.  There are a lot of smart people out there.  It must be because I worked harder than everybody else.  Let me tell you something – there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help.  There was a great teacher somewhere in your life.  Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive.  Somebody invested in roads and bridges.  If you’ve got a business. you didn’t build that.  Somebody else made that happen.  The Internet didn’t get invented on its own.  Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.  There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don’t do on our own.  I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service.  That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires.

So we say to ourselves, ever since the founding of this country, you know what, there are some things we do better together.  That’s how we funded the GI Bill.  That’s how we created the middle class.  That’s how we built the Golden Gate Bridge or the Hoover Dam.  That’s how we invented the Internet.  That’s how we sent a man to the moon.  We rise or fall together as one nation and as one people, and that’s the reason I’m running for president – because I still believe in that idea.  You’re not on your own, we’re in this together.”

We’ve already made a trillion dollars’ worth of cuts.  We can make some more cuts in programs that don’t work, and make government work more efficiently…We can make another trillion or trillion-two, and what we then do is ask for the wealthy to pay a little bit more …

There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me, because they want to give something back.  They know they didn’t -look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own.  You didn’t get there on your own.  I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart.  There are a lot of smart people out there.  It must be because I worked harder than everybody else.  Let me tell you something – there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help.  There was a great teacher somewhere in your life.  Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive.  Somebody invested in roads and bridges.  If you’ve got a business. you didn’t build that.  Somebody else made that happen.  The Internet didn’t get invented on its own.  Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.  There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don’t do on our own.  I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service.  That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires.

So we say to ourselves, ever since the founding of this country, you know what, there are some things we do better together.  That’s how we funded the GI Bill.  That’s how we created the middle class.  That’s how we built the Golden Gate Bridge or the Hoover Dam.  That’s how we invented the Internet.  That’s how we sent a man to the moon.  We rise or fall together as one nation and as one people, and that’s the reason I’m running for president – because I still believe in that idea.  You’re not on your own, we’re in this together.”

Then somebody at Republican Headquarters realized that if they took the two short sentences yellow highlighted above out of the speech and presented them as Youtube clips with Obama saying nothing else, it would obscure Obama’s point that virtually no business in America could operate without help of some kind from sources paid for with public funds, such as our roads and highways.

And then Democrats countered by squealing that the two sentences were deliberately taken out of context in order to obscure their intended meaning, and much fingerpointing ensued on both sides.

And then the Wall Street Journal jumped into the fray by publishing an article by one Gordon Crovitz ostensibly refuting Obama’s assertion that the Internet had been created by government research.  The problem was that Crovitz’s account bore only a tangential relationship with reality, and you have to wonder why he thought he could get away with it since most of the men he discussed were still alive and could immediately refute him.  Which they did, the most entertaining of whom being Vincent Cerf, primary developer of TCP/IP, who observed that he could fertilize his tomatoes with Crovitz’s account of his role.

But of course this hasn’t stopped Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh, and Fox from citing Crovitz’s article as a definitive refutation of Obama.   Nor will this stop Crovitz and the Wall Street Journal from printing articles they know to be full of untruths since the game nowadays seems to be to shout mendacious propaganda at the top of one’s lungs, confident that it will convince much of the public.

Look, i’m a liberal.  Worse, i’m a damn progressive, and this whole website displays my bias.  But what i don’t do is post things here that i know to be false.  For that matter, when kind readers have called errors to my attention, i have immediately posted corrections.  I’m biased, but i’m not a liar, which is more than i can say about scumbags like Crovitz.

So if you see an error on this site, please email me and i’ll stamp it out.   mattegray.sf@gmail.com  

Tillandsia usneoides

Meanwhile, some more of the flora at Saratoga Springs

I drove up to Saratoga Springs for a birthday getaway, joining a group of men whose retreats i’ve enjoyed many times. I hadn’t gone in several years owing to general decrepitude and my falls off the Segway that kept me from being able to participate in the play, but back in January i decided that i owed it to myself to schedule a brief swan song during the middle of this year’s retreat.

Turned out to be way more fun than i’d imagined possible, as by napping on Saturday afternoon i conserved my energy and it had been long enough since my last broken bones that i was able to play well with others.

Several of the campers are from the east coast, and of course they delight in making tart observations about the eccentricities of Californians, especially all our food fetishes. Overhearing one of the campers inquire whether any of the food served was vegan, my friend Ken observed, “Hell, out here in California even the rabbits are vegetarians.” That one just gets better and better for me, especially as i envision those clawed and fanged New England rabbits.

The fringe benefit was that i picked up highway 29 just above Vallejo and followed it past Napa and through the Napa Valley vineyards to Calistoga. And from there over the flanks of Mount Saint Helena (which unlike Mount St. Helens up in Washington is a totally dormant volcano, at least so far) through Middleton, Lower Lake, and Kelseyville, past Clear Lake and Lakeport to its junction with highway 20 five miles from camp, a lovely route i’d never taken and such a pleasure that i used it in return. If you’re ever going up to Clear Lake from the city, use this route for a change from 101.

Meanwhile, here’s one of the pics i got at camp. The water strider was a bonus.

And here’s my other critter shot. Damn little thing obstinately refused to look at the camera, and i pushed him beyond his endurance when i ran around in front of him and stuck the macro lens in his face.

And OK, one more flora pic because i couldn’t believe my luck. I was rolling along on the Segway and suddenly there at my feet was this.

Well, Matte made a major breakthrough at the gym this morning, leaving all the young dudes and dudettes abuzz, whispering among themselves, “At least the old fart is finally in fashion.”

See, Becky sent me a package of those way trendy sockettes that everybody else is wearing, the ones that display the ankle owing to their lack of tops.  So i go prancing in this morning with my ankles cringing from the cold air, and heads turned at the sartorial extravaganza.

Il faut souffrir pour être belle.

Gloria and i went to the Cindy Sherman show at SF MOMA, and when we went into the first gallery i was highly entertained by a roomful of huge self portraits in which Cindy is made up and dressed as a wide variety of society ladies. But then i was thinking, oh dear, this is going to get real boring very soon.

I was wrong.

The content of the galleries varied dramatically, and some of it was downright stunning. A number of them quite funny and quite a few harsh. If you’re not going to be able to go to the show, here’s a link to SF MOMA’s presentation, but i’d suggest that you not look at that link if you can see the show because part of my enjoyment came from being jerked from one sort of photographs to the next. And besides, looking at them on a screen cannot duplicate seeing them in their immensity on gallery walls.

And here’s a link to an excellent page on Cindy by Jack Laylin on Artsy.

And speaking of portraits, here’s a pic of one at Flora Grubb. If you haven’t been there, go. And take someone.

In preparation for Gloria’s visit i poached a big filet of wild local sockeye and stuffed the refrigerator with fresh okra, large yellow crookneck squash, and superb yellow corn on the cob (from Glenn Tanimoto at the Heart of the City Farmers’ Market).  Not to mention having on hand nectarines, heirloom tomatoes, and way more other stuff than we could possibly eat.

So of course a major agenda item for me was to show her some of the new restaurants i’d discovered.  Like Gilberth’s, where we went for her first lunch.  She had the Chicken Salad, which i’d reviewed last May, i had the pork belly sandwich, which was delicious, and we split an order of their superb fried Brussels sprouts, about which i’d previously raved and of which i finally remembered to get a pic.  They taste much better than they look, as they are not burned.

The next lunch was at SoMa StrEat Food Park, which i was lucky enough to visit when they’d been open only a week.  It’s taken off now, and perhaps thanks to glowing reviews in the SF Chronicle (and, ahem, here) there were long lines at some of the trucks.  We tried the Little Green Cyclo, and their truffle oil garlic noodles were the best. noodles. i. ever. ate.  Never thought i’d use “chewy” as praise, but they were and it is.

For one of the evening meals, i drove us down to Pacifica and we got a whole slab of pork ribs from Gorilla Barbecue, about which i’ve raved repeatedly.   It’s take out only, but it’s worth driving to Pacifica for.  At home, Gloria cooked some yellow patty pan squash from her garden with garlic and turmeric and something else delicious, and we made a meal on squash and ribs.

Eat at all three of these places, folks.

Oh, and to be fair, here’s a shot in the other bathroom at Gilberth’s, both of which are open to everyone regardless of your sex, real or imagined.

Umm, well, actually the Gatherer. Just got in from the Seward Street slides, about which i’ve written on several occasions. This time my objective was to try to catch those two plum trees when they were still covered with ripe fruit, bribe one of the surly teenagers who routinely hang around nearby smoking things to climb up in the tree and pick me a bagful of the plums so i can come back here and make, for the delectation of the multitudes, Wild Seward Street Plum Jam.

Got there too late last year, as the trees had been stripped, but oh, did i ever hit it perfect this year. The ground was covered with fallen fruit, almost all of which was mushy at best, but the bushes beneath the trees cushioned the fall of the fruit there and left it unspoiled. So from them i got a couple of quarts in short order and stopped because i didn’t want to be greedy and get more than i needed for a small batch of the jam, and yes, another factor in my stopping so soon was fear of being caught by the Wicked Witch, of whom i’ve also written.

To be frank, i don’t think these plums are going to be winning any foodie prizes, but they’re good, and i sure do like the idea of making a windfall jam of them.

Here’s the tree.

And my haul. BTW, they’re only about an inch in diameter, and i got that shot above using the 20x zoom.

Gloria’s arriving this afternoon for a few days, and won’t she be excited to be put to work in the kitchen.

Note: Actually, Gloria pitched in like a trooper and is largely responsible for the removal of the pits from the jam. Since the little plums were so small, i decided it would be less trouble to pick the pits out of the jam once it was cooked. I was wrong. And if it had been left up to me, you’da hadta just spit the pits out as you were eating the jam.

Look for it in the 2012 Production Report under the code SFPAL on 13 July.

I’m doing this on the website so i’ll have proof that for the first time since i met him in 1959, i have remembered my dear old friend Dick’s birthday….on the actual birthday itself.

Here are some recent photos of a Hancock Street artichoke with which i can see some parallels. No no, to myself, being only a week younger than Dick but farther gone.

fall’n into the sere

Many Californians have been following with great interest our new ban on the sale of foie gras that went into effect on July 1st.  Well, actually, foie gras itself is not banned, but rather the sale in restaurants of foie gras produced by gavage, the insertion of food directly into the stomach through a tube so as to force the bird to eat more than it would of its own volition in order to grotesquely enlarge the liver and make it tastier.

Animal rights activists argued successfully that this technique should be banned since its use on humans in prisons is widely considered to be torture.  Well, except in Guantánamo where it is routinely used on obstinate hunger strikers for their own good.

We don’t seem to have a solution for Guantánamo, but it occurred to me this morning that we do have a way to ensure an bountiful supply of foie gras without force feeding the ducks.  I look around at our red states and see that half the population is obese, and yet they are not being force fed.  So all we have to do is start lacing Purina Duck Chow with high fructose corn syrup and let nature take its course.  Voilà.

Meanwhile, a Duboce Street pied à terre

San Francisco mayor Ed Lee set off a firestorm of shrill criticism from the leftists the other day when he floated the idea of instituting a “stop and frisk” program here as an anti-crime measure.

Nonsense, i say. What patriotic citizen could possibly object to being stopped and frisked a few times a day as he went about his business?

Just don’t call it “Frisko”.

Meanwhile, Oliver’s gigantic bird of paradise on Hancock Street is putting on quite a show.