The book is better

I recently went to see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button after hearing, as I'm sure you have, that it was really good. Oscar season is difficult for me because I have such high expectations. These are supposed to be the best movies of the year coming out between Thanksgiving and Christmas and yet most of them are disappointing. Ben Button was beautifully shot, looked expensive and had two big stars in it but I thought it was a bit of a bore. The whole time I was thinking I couldn't wait to read the book. I wanted to luxuriate in the story a bit more but the movie just kept trucking through time periods and costumes and CGI'd ages.

There was very little humor even though the whole situation is fraught with potential hilarity. And somehow the characters end up being devoid of likeability, I wasn't moved at all by their situations. I found it to be too long and slightly depressing. The next day, I was at the bookstore and found the short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald of the same name and read it. It was completely different from the movie. A different time period, different location, without any of the main plot points, and, it was silly. It couldn't have provided any ideas for the film. Harrumph, I thought, I was so looking forward to the book!

Then a few days later, quite by accident, I picked up a book in the same bookstore called "The Confessions of Max Tivoli." It's a novel about a man who ages backwards, has an epic love story and takes place in turn-of the-century San Francisco. How wonderful, the story I was looking for and it takes place in my beloved San Francisco! I read it in a few days and loved it. It has much more similarity to the movie's story than the F. Scott Fitzgerald short. In fact, the author Andrew Sean Greer said that he didn't even know of the short when he wrote the book but was relieved to discover how different they were. He says on his website that the production company tried to buy rights to the book in 2004 but he didn't want it to be made into a film. It makes me wonder if the writer, then, modeled his script after the book but with just the number of changes required to avoid a lawsuit.

What really boggles me, though, is why Greer didn't sell the rights to the book? His name and the book have come up in hundreds of mentions of the film anyway, with many people saying the book is better – a common remark about books turned into movies. So why not take their money and let them give us a better movie? He could have insisted it have a different title and could even opt out of the credits but still pocket the cash. In any regard if you liked the movie but though it would be a better read, I recommend "The Confessions of Max Tivoli."

I left my mark on this town

I'm making a short documentary on a mural project sponsored by Amnesty International and got to paint one of the puzzle pieces. It was cool how a theme of love and peace evolved between the 40 or so participants, without any prompting. Most of the pieces were painted by pre-teens from various youth organization and several were painted by passerbys and the organizers of the project. Mine, lower left, says "Imagine." I wanted to do the doodle of John Lennon (by John Lennon) but forgot to look it up before I went. I painted it on a jean jacket when I was in high school!


Here's the finished mural, decorating the Tenderloin district of San Francisco. It's where all the shelters and housing for the (previously) homeless are so there are a lot of people on the street all the time down there. We got many enthusiastic comments over the course of the week of painting. "We're all connected," "Life is like a puzzle, except you never get all the pieces," and "Why are you guys making it look like it was painted by pre-schoolers?" were some of the more memorable.

I have a plan

My friend Natalie called me yesterday, distraught. "You're leaving San Francisco?!" It was only an hour and a half after posting my blog. I had already told most of the people here and many people in Los Angeles that I was thinking about it but not everyone knew.

"Yes," I said, "but I'm moving back to L.A., I thought you'd be happy. Why are you upset?"

"Because San Francisco is just so YOU!" she said.

I laughed. "Well, San Francisco isn't going anywhere, I can come back anytime!" Of course I love it here, of course I'd love to stay but I need to make a transition right now and can't do it while I'm paying $1,885/mo. rent. It's an expensive place to live. I could live more cheaply and have roommates but I don't want to. I was willing to do that when I lived in L.A. because I was pursuing something I was passionate about. That's the problem. In order to stay, I have to get a job that pays enough to afford the lifestyle of a single person in the city and with the money running out, I don't have the luxury of time to find the right opportunity.

Today, while on this call, I realized that none of these jobs will allow me to do what I enjoy. I also understood why I keep being drawn to marketing but find myself constantly disappointed by the jobs I've had. This morning I wrote down all the aspects of marketing that I like. Amazingly, they're all the reasons that I love filmmaking! I like telling a story, creative problem solving, collaboration and tapping into something that is meaningful to people. I love organizing information, research, using logic and intuition to come up with a strategy, testing my theories, seeing them work and making them better. No job is going to let me do all that. Even if companies SAY they want a person to do those things, in reality the job will be waiting for projects to start or be approved, fighting to keep a project from being ruined by the short-sightedness of other people, maintaining the lame status quo, putting together Powerpoint presentations that fabricate the effectiveness of the project or spending money in useless but high-profile ways.

See, I want to make an impact. The reason I like volunteering is because the people I'm working for need me. They WANT strategic marketing and they're willing to let me do what I'm good at. The fact is, I assured Natalie, I have a plan. I'm launching a company that provides a service to small businesses that will make a real and immediate impact for a relatively low cost. This is a simple, down-to-earth idea that provides a necessity. No bullshit, no fluff, no ego, or waste of time and money for something "cool" that means nothing. This is a company that I'm uniquely qualified to run, working for companies that I feel passionate about. I'm so excited about it. It started to come to me over the last few months when I found myself pitching and selling this idea in my interviews, more effectively than I was selling myself! While on the phone with Natalie, it all came pouring out of me, clear as day. Of course! I even thought, maybe I should write a book about it: "My year at mom's."

It's official

This has been a difficult blog post to write. After three weeks of deliberation and two weeks of drafts on this post, I've decided to leave to San Francisco. There are so many things about this city that I love, I am very sad to leave it. It's a culturally vibrant, cosmopolitan city with liberal sensibilities, incredible food and a kick-ass public transit system. Masses of people commute by bicycle. On every doorstep there are plants in pots: exotic flowers, fruit trees, vegetables and even grapevines!


I remember a friend of mine who bought a house in Silverlake, Los Angeles, and within a few days, the potted plants she put on her porch were stolen. In San Francisco, the streets are clean, Europeans love to visit it, the air is fresh and it's surrounded by the ocean, a bay, mountains and redwood forests. Yes, I will miss it. I will miss my local farmer's market, walking to visit my friend Sharon in Hayes Valley, eating amazing food in little hole-in-the-wall restaurants like the vegetarian Japanese place Cha-Ya, getting to museums downtown in twenty minutes on the BART, picking up my freshly roasted and freshly ground coffee at Ritual Coffee and the cute boys who ride by on bicycles. The only things I won't miss are the fire trucks that scream by my apartment five times a day and freezing year-round.


A year ago, when I left L.A., I was contemplating the same decision I'm making now. I was unemployed and looking for a job. I didn't want any of the jobs I was qualified for and didn't even want most the ones I wasn't qualified for. I wondered what was wrong with me. Was I afraid? Lazy? Unambitious? The fact is, I had stopped pursuing acting, something I spent five years on, but didn't really have the opportunity to figure out what was next. What was next? Now, a year later, I'm fighting the same problem. I've been out of work for over three months. I've applied for jobs, I've worked my contacts, I've finessed the resume, I've gone to interviews and prepared presentations but still at the end of the day, I know that I'm not working very hard for it. I don't REALLY want these jobs and more and more I feel my life slipping away.

If I have a job, it's not that difficult to keep on keepin' on and just do the job. In fact, I care about my work, I enjoy work and I don't have a problem getting up and going but being out of work suddenly challenges me. Devoting a day to pursuing a job I don't want is ten times more difficult than just doing the job I don't want. Instead my interests have taken over and I've found the bulk of my time being spent planting a garden, taking photos, making a music video with a collaborator, making a video for Amnesty International, writing copy and developing strategy for a non-profit, volunteering for Taproot, uploading my video clips to YouTube and watching documentaries on Netflix. It turns out, I enjoy marketing much more when I'm volunteering my time. Why? Because it's my time to give, no one owns me.

I know that I am one of the privileged of the world, a person who has choices. Even when I've felt myself under stress, confused and sometimes depressed, I still know that I am happier, more optimistic and more capable than so many other people. At times, I have let the guilt of wanting more keep me from being what I want, from doing what I want. It has always been easy for me to say what I don't want. Maybe it's a because my father was controlling but I could always say "no": quit, leave, break up and take off, anytime. Embarking on a path towards doing something though, saying "yes" has always been extremely difficult. So that's where I am now. It's not the leaving that I'm afraid of, it's what comes after.

The truth is, I'm afraid. Afraid of not knowing what I want, afraid of failing to achieve what I want, afraid of disappointing the people I love, afraid of wasting my life. It's taken me several years to come to this decision, a decision to figure out what's next. What can I put my heart towards that will sustain me, financially and emotionally? That is the question I am embarking on a journey to answer. For the time being, I will move in with my mom. I'll stay with her as long as I need to find my path, launch a business, make a film, write a script or whatever it is I'm meant to do. I will reconcile myself to the fact that I'll be living at home with mom when I got to my 20th high school reunion later this year. I have to let go of my pride, banish fear and embrace my own potential. That journey begins now.

I just finished watching the first season of Mad Men and there's a great quote by Peggy, the secretary who finds herself taking on a career as a copywriter, something unheard for a woman in the ad world. She's on a date with a boy from "back home" and when he snips that "those people" in Manhattan aren't better than us she says: “Those people in Manhattan? “They are better than us. They want things they haven’t seen.”

This is what I love about San Francisco

Today, some friends and I hit five sidewalk sales while walking off our brunch. We didn't have to park the car because we were on foot and all five sales were within a few blocks of each other. None of them were hosted by flea-market professionals disguised as regular people, there were no customers scooping up all the good stuff in the first hour to resell at their swanky overpriced vintage store, and everyone was nice and gave us things for free or for cheaper than they were listed, just because. This is the cool, fun bounty I brought home for a total of $35 and a relaxing afternoon:

Wicker basket $2
Lucky Brand scarf $1
1950's Gund Woolie Lammi $10
Brass bell $1.50
Painted wood frame $1
Vintage rabbit tapestry $7
Gold metal Italian bag $2
1976 series "Children of the World" mug $1
Two neckscarves $1.50
Four Cerve Italian glasses $8

Concerned citizen

This weekend I found a note on my car. It was a slip of paper printed on a laser printer. It read as follows:

Thank you for taking up two parking spaces.

Had you been more thoughtful, you could have moved forward/backward to allow another vehicle to park.

So rather than helping to solve the problem, you have helped to make it more difficult. Please make an effort to do otherwise in the future.

At first I was shocked. I couldn't have taken up two spaces because I am actually very thoughtful and would never do that. Even though I was in a hurry to get somewhere, I got out and looked. Sure enough, there was two or three feet of curb behind my car but it seemed as though the car in front of me had found plenty of room in the "other parking spot". Besides, I have a tiny car. My RAV4 is shorter than pretty much every car on the road except a mini so another car would have taken up those extra feet. Would they leave a note on a SUV saying that their car is too large for the city and how dare they take up so much space?

I drove away kind of incensed. This person has made it their job to monitor their street (neighborhood? city?!) for rude parkers, printing out sheets of these notes and cutting them into "tickets" to issue. It's hard to imagine that this note would cause anyone to change their behavior. Dripping with condescension and judgment, it fails to even indicate "the problem" the note is trying to address, so a truly clueless person would only be baffled.

For a moment, I was tempted to write a response and leave it on my car. This is what I would have written:

Thank you for being such a diligent citizen.

Without you, surely our city would fall into chaos and ruin, overrun by the rude and stupid.

At the time that I parked, another car was parked in front of the neighboring driveway and taking up a few feet of curb so I squeezed my tiny car into the only space available.

More protests please!

Last week, I was chatting with a friend about going to watch the Olympic Torch relay here in San Francisco. Following the protests in London and Paris, there were rumors of a similar reception here. I didn’t go, ultimately, because of the confusion over the route and because wasn’t sure what to make of the protests. While Skyping with a friend in Europe about it, he said “throw a stone for me.” Throw a stone? At whom? One of the runners? I can support boycotts. I know I’ve said this before but I’ll say it again, I remember when we boycotted “Made in China” products and I don’t really recall what kind of human rights improvements China made to get off that list but I didn’t hear anyone complaining at the register of Target or heard anyone pressuring their favorite designers even though they’ve all set up shop in China or another country with much worse treatment of workers – and charging the same ridiculous prices.

I can support peaceful protest. After all, that’s what the Dalai Lama always preaches. We all know the torch relay is a huge media event and I fully support Free Tibet and Amnesty International using the coverage as a way to get their message seen and heard. But what I can’t understand is why the thing needs to be stopped: flame snuffed, athletes mobbed, bus blocked. Again, it’s not that I don’t support the causes; it’s just that the reason isn’t clear and as always I think from a marketing perspective, it doesn’t win you friends. Less informed Americans will just be baffled and defensive, even if they pay more attention it’s now going through a filter of confusion. “Why do Tibetans hate the Olympics?” someone is bound to think. But actually, I worry more about the Chinese. We have to separate the Chinese government from the Chinese people just as we would expect others to do of us here in the U.S. The Chinese are very excited and proud to host the Olympics.

In San Francisco, a false relay route was published so no one could disrupt, or even witness the relay. What the heck? Isn’t the whole POINT is to support international solidarity and unity? Perusing photos on Flickr, it seems that only various protesters showed and the only thing they saw was each other. BBC news published several “man on the street” interviews with people in China to get their reaction. Their reactions are actually very balanced – “yes, we have problems but many people are misinformed about China and should take this opportunity for increased dialogue not shutting us out.” Hear, hear! They very aptly ask, what about the U.S. human rights violations? I have to raise my eyebrows at that and think, yeah, what about Guatanamo, Iraq, 1 in 35 adult black men in prison, the death penalty, depriving people of medical care, homicide, Native Americans, homelessness? We may not be beating monks or imprisoning writers but we’re certainly not perfect.

Yes, we should express ourselves. Yes, we should take a stand. Yes, we should protest and boycott whatever we don’t agree with. And yes, we should pay more attention to China but we should not feel that we are superior and we should consider the best way to being a dialogue with the people of China. Each and every one of us purchases items from China on a regular basis, so we always have the option to make a statement through boycott. It’s just not as sexy as laying down in front of a bus on national television.

In a couple of weeks, a defense contractor hired by the federal government, using funds from Homeland Security (read the Huff Post article!), is going to begin spraying the Bay Area to eradicate a harmless moth. This campaign is scheduled to continue for years despite protests from our representatives, expert etymologists, farmers and citizens, and despite the fact that the chemical being sprayed is not necessary and unsafe. Do you think any of the protesters from the torch relay will show up at City Hall on April 28 for the peaceful protest? No, I don’t think we should protest less, I think we should protest more.

What may be construed as "street art"

Taken on the streets of San Francisco and Berkeley.

Scaling the walls

On Christmas day, a Siberian tiger escaped its enclosure at the San Francisco Zoo and attacked three teenage boys, killing one, before police shot and killed it. The zoo claims the teen and his friends were throwing things, harassing the tiger, and had evidence of drugs in their car. But the real concern seems to be whether the walls should be higher; clearly the public isn’t safe around a caged wild animal.

Yesterday, the paper reported that since the attack, in two separate incidents, a 600-pound polar bear scaled the wall of her enclosure and nearly escaped and a snow leopard, while being moved between enclosures, chewed a 4-inch hole in the mesh cage and stuck its head and paw through. The zoo administrator denied these reports as escape attempts or anything to be worried about. Of course, they mean that we don't have to worry about ourselves. We should still be worried about the animals.

Most of the animals that people like to see in zoos are mammals. Mammals are the only species that need touch from other mammals to survive. Our social structures are built around that touch – how and when and who can touch us. These majestic animals that we love to look at - gorillas, tigers, lions, elephants and polar bears – have incredibly complex social structures like our own. Think about your life. How many people you see on a daily basis, how many you talk to, how many are your friends and your family. Think about how many miles you travel, all the different kinds of foods you eat and the places you go and look at.

Now imagine that you instead you spent your whole life in an apartment with one person you don’t even know and might not even like. Your keepers expect you to mate and have children with that person! Should you actually like this person enough to do so, it's very probable that they'll take your child or sell you to another zoo. They feed you the same thing every day. You never leave, you never see anyone different, you weigh twice as much as you do now, and you sleep all the time because you’re depressed.

Now imagine that six days a week visitors came to look at you. They yell at you, pound on your windows, take pictures of you and sometimes throw things. They want you to do something entertaining, to make them laugh or smile but they get to leave and you will always be there. Would you regard that life as anything but torture? Wouldn’t you also scale a wall or chew a hole through your cage and attack someone? Wouldn’t you do anything you could to get out of that situation?

I have said before that PETA is too extreme but on this issue, I agree with them one hundred percent. Zoos are pitiful prisons and they should be closed. All of them. The position of the Humane Society, whom I normally support, is pathetic and contradictory:

The Humane Society of the United States strongly believes that under most circumstances wild animals should be permitted to exist undisturbed in their natural environments. However, we recognize the widespread existence of zoos and acknowledge that some serve a demonstrable purpose in the long-term benefit of animals, such as the preservation and restoration of endangered species, and the education of people to the needs of wild animals and their role in ecosystems. [Emphasis mine]

But then they go on to say that not only is it impossible to simulate an animal's natural environment, only 10% of facilities are accredited to humane standards - and even that doesn't ensure humane treatment! Their focus is to work for better treatment of animals in zoos. It reminds me of the tobacco companies who, when their sales are dropping, ask how they could get people smoking more and never question whether they should even be making cigarettes. That's what we should be asking here, why are there zoos?

Zoos fail at everything they claim to do. They don't educate. Where's the education is seeing an animal in a cage? It's not going to do anything it does in the wild and people don't want to learn anyway, they want to be entertained. Zoos don't preserve species. Even if they breed endangered species, those animals can never be released into the wild because if they're raised in captivity, they aren't really wild animals! In Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond says that the animals that are domesticated are domesticated because it was possible, because it was easy. Wild animals are not meant to be raised by humans.

How many people, I wonder, after learning that an animal they've seen in the zoo is endangered, like the Siberian Tiger that killed the teenager, go home a write a check for preservation, or find out what they can do to help that species, get involved or write a letter? Are people really more concerned about poaching and encroachment and loss of habitat when they've just seen a majestic animal pacing in a cage like a creature that's lost its mind? Clearly it only sends a message that it's acceptable to torture animals.

"But the kids LOVE the zoo!" No, kids don't love zoos, they love animals. They come out of the womb loving animals but they have to be taught to love the zoo. Whenever I’ve gone with my nephew, we spend more time trying to get him excited about the exhibits than anything else. “Look Jonathan, look over here!” we yell while he seems perfectly fine to look at the plants, climb on a rock or watch other people.

Our pets are treated ten times better than these animals. They're domesticated for one thing, so human company is something they choose and enjoy. (Except for some states like North Carolina that allow ownership of wild animals including tigers.) They get to eat all different kinds of foods, or whatever food they want. They get out into the world, get to socialize with other animals, get love and affection and new experiences. Even so, we've all seen what happens when a dog is tied up and neglected. They're mean, they bark and bite and attack. Why? Because it's inhumane to restrict an animal's movement and deprive them of social interaction. Even domesticated animals have been known to escape from the slaughter house.

So I find it really sad that people love zoos. A Google search of "I love zoos" turned up 225,000 results while "I hate zoos," only 26,400. Ten times more people find the idea of building bigger walls and restricting the animals even more to be preferable over closing the zoo altogether. We put people in prisons as a punishment but what did the animals do to us? I say if you really like animals, boycott the zoo, donate to WWF, watch animal shows like Planet Earth, buy your kids a subscription to National Geographic Kids and take them hiking where you can see wild animals in their own habitat.

Here's the way kids should enjoy lions!

Give up the plastic bag!

I've fallen out of writing again (again!) but maybe have another good excuse. The project I was hired to manage, the job I moved for, is “on ice” which basically means it’s been killed. It’s technically on hold but who knows for how long and in January the woman I’m filling in for could come back or the head count could get cut, which means I don’t have a job anyway.

Once again, I find myself reevaluating my self, my work, my life. Life is definitely more difficult when everything goes topsy turvy every few months. Last year I planned to move to Santa Monica to be closer to a boyfriend who I then ended things with because he was breaking my heart. I had already quit acting so I decided to move to Santa Monica anyway to ease my dislike of LA and the questioning began. Then this year, I started another relationship, ended that relationship, quit my job, started a new job, got laid off, was unemployed for three months, got another job, then got hired away by this one, and then moved to San Francisco.

You might think I’m just indecisive but I don’t think that’s it. I think I’m searching for something and I’m just processing my experiences a lot faster than I did when I was younger. Where I would have stayed in a job or relationship for two or three years, I now only need a few months to know if it’s right or wrong. And I value my time so much more. Every weekend I feel like I cram as much fun time as I can into my two days.

This weekend I bought green zebra striped tomatoes, the last of the heirloom crop for the year, at the farmer's market. I went with a friend to Golden Gate Park and climbed to the top of the tower in the de Young art museum for the most amazing views of the park, the city, and the bay. We went to a craft fair and bought a postcard from a woman inside her self-made "postcard machine," and then headed to the Conservatory of Flowers to see lowland and highland tropical plants and orchids. I went to a charming holiday party and socialized with my co-workers. And the next day met another friend downtown to see the latest exhibits at SF MOMA and then to the Ferry Building for a beer and some chowder (I ate animals!).


But tomorrow morning I'll be back on the bus and back in my (for now) routine. I always sit if I can on the side of the bus that faces west. After we leave the city, with the morning sun glinting off the buildings with a honey glow, and past the airport where I once saw a plane fly silently towards me as if in slow motion from a huge cloud so that it looked like a shark swimming out from behind a coral reef, I love to watch the fog fingering its way through the mountain ridges above the reservoir where these little white birds are migrating. It makes me so happy to see animals, like a little deer leaping or a snowy egret landing near the road, a small herd of cows chomping grass or a horse shaking his mane, but what I see way too many of are plastic bags.

Of the debris along the road, almost all of it is those flimsy plastic bags that every store wants to put your items in when you buy something. They're caught in tree branches, wrapped around sign posts, twisted into long grasses, or shredded and flapping in the wind from a fence. There's literally one every 10 feet all the way down the highway. If they're here, it's not difficult to imagine them in the ocean, choking birds and suffocating fish and elsewhere in the wild mucking things up.

I stopped using plastic bags, for the most part, years ago. I take my Trader Joe’s totes to the farmer’s market, a canvas bag to the mail box when I retrieve my mail or will ball up a small plastic bag if I’m going on a walk but stopping by the store somewhere along the way. This was one of the first “reduce, reuse, recycle” actions I took so it seems so basic to me. I still get looks sometimes but what I think is even more ridiculous are the people who will let one tiny item get thrown in to a bag. It doesn’t even occur to them to say, “I don’t need a bag”?

Some cities are banning Styrofoam as a takeout package because of the havoc it wreaks in nature and plastic bags are next. A letter to the editor in Wired from a Dutch guy suggests charging five cents for each bag, but it's hard to imagine that working on Americans. If you need a New Year’s resolution that’s fun and easy, I suggest this one: give up the plastic bag!

Hotel Michelle

I forgot to say in my post about the kitties what an inspiration Michelle was. It's easy to write off someone like her, who calls the kitties she helps her "kids," as a crazy cat lady. But she was one of the sweetest people I've ever met. Tirelessly dedicated to helping the cats of San Francisco, she calls her garage "Hotel Michelle."

There were a half dozen cats there when I visited, each in various stages of recovery from surgery or medical treatment. They all have their own cage with food and water and newspaper, and lovingly looked after by Michelle. She works full-time, owns a condo and spends all of her free time helping people like me (although in fairness, I was more dedicated in my quest than even the average person.)

Clover, the name the shelter gave momma cat, is up for adoption now and she is a cute little thing! The San Francisco SPCA is one of the best, a no-kill shelter with volunteers who keep the animals company and spend their weekends trying to get them adopted. If you need a kitty pay them a visit!

Inner city kitties (the saga ends)

Saturday, October 27
I'm sitting at my computer drinking coffee when I hear a little mewing outside my house. I run to the window hoping to see a cute kitty who had come to visit, but expecting to find a piece of rusted metal squeaking in the wind, tempting me with its sweet sound and the promise of a fluffy animal in my paws. To my surprise, I found a momma cat and three tiny kittens. Determined to rescue these animals from cold, hunger and the back alleys of San Francisco, I call the city to see how to scoop them up and bring them in. They tell me that I have to rent traps and it could take several days and then I have to bring them in, all in separate cages. I start thinking of the logistics of catching four cats, renting cages, driving them somewhere and returning the cages, when I'm only home on the weekends and have a big trip coming up. I buy food and feed momma cat.

Sunday, October 28
I do more research on strays and the various options available. The SPCA says they have volunteers that can help. I leave a message.

Wednesday, October 31
I have to go to New York, early in the a.m. and won't be back until Monday night. I've been leaving food out for momma cat but am worried about them while I'm gone.

Monday, November 5
I was so worried that these kitties would have grown up and jumped over the fence while I was gone and wondered how the heck I was going to have time to capture them. I couldn't do anything until the weekend. I call and leave another message with the SPCA.

Tuesday, November 6
I keep feeding mom and eventually am able to pat her head and pet her a little. She's totally adorable, a little black and white kitty with a tail that curls alongside her and gets all animated when I pet her. I feed her up on the deck by my house, training her to get closer to me in anticipation of eventually trapping her and getting her spayed. The kittens still run when they see me and hide in the basement.

Wednesday, November 7
I hear back from someone at the SPCA that I need to get traps, etc. I leave another message imploring them to send me a volunteer, "I can't do this alone!" I say. Momma cat comes back over, she even comes in my house. She seems to want to be adopted. She's still nursing the kittens but definitely weaning them as she walks away a lot while they're feeding.

Thursday, November 8
Finally a woman named Michelle called. She's a volunteer with the SPCA and lives only a few blocks from my house. She arranged to meet me at my house that Saturday morning. She said we should start early, at the time I've seen them out there, which is usually around 6:30am.

Friday, November 9
I've become used to this routine of coming home and looking out my window to see the kitty. She looks up at me through the window and the kittens play in a little patch of dirt, wrestling and fighting each other.

Saturday, November 10
I make a big pot of coffee and Michelle arrives at 6:30am with three humane traps, towels and food. The kittens are nowhere to be seen but don't usually come out until mom does. Within an hour or so, mama cat came around looking for food. I didn't see the kittens but figured we should get started. I coax her into the trap and bingo! This was going to be easy.

Now there were the kittens, hiding in the basement. We set the trap with food in the doorway of the basement and I made meowing sounds to draw them out. I had to try a variety of places and configurations for the trap. I lined it with a bit of rug that I had put out weeks before for the family to sleep on. The brave one that usually scouts ahead of the two others came out looking for mom but saw me and ran back into the basement and past the trap again where curiosity got the better of this cat and it went in. Snap! Another one caught.

Next up, the timid duo. We set up the last trap in the same place and I again coaxed the cats with meowing (and had no idea at the time that this is something I would spend several nights doing). They came right out, side-by-side, but instead of going in the trap, wandered around it, crawling on top of it at. It was like they smelled the food but couldn't figure out how to get it. They mewed and mewed for mom. At the moment they caught a glimpse of a human they dashed back into the basement. This went on for a couple more hours, trying the trap in various places and meowing to beckon. Eventually, we gave up and decided to try again tomorrow. I was feeling pretty good though, this cat trapping thing was going to be easy.

Sunday, November 11
The next morning, Michelle and I were up early again. I tried the trap in a bunch of places, eventually putting it between the basement door and the outside, barricaded so that it's the only place to go. I do my cat crying bit and after a few tries they come out, SNAP! something goes into the trap. We check and it's only one, the braver of the two. I'm pretty sure they were together and now I'm thinking the runt is all alone and knows that a trap is not something to go into. We try the same trick with her but closer to the area of the basement where she's hiding. She won't come out at all. Michelle goes home and brings mom back and we try to use mom to coax her out. No such luck. Mom just gets stressed out hearing her kitten cry. I crawl into this dark cramped place covered in cobwebs to find her. Turns out she's in the wall, under the building, no where that I can go. We leave food out for her and give up for the day.

Monday, November 12
The next morning, the food looks untouched and I'm worried that the kitten is never coming out and doesn't even know how to eat. Michelle checks with someone that adopts kittens, shows her the other two and determines that they're old enough to eat food.

That night I saw the kitten in the backyard. I sneak downstairs and close the basement door. At least now it couldn't go into the walls, and I figure it will be easier to catch in the backyard. I hear it crying in the bamboo so I go in there and search every inch. Nothing, but I still hear the crying. I call Michelle and she comes over to help. We both, with flashlights, crawl around in the bamboo. We shake the stalks, we dig up leaves, we overturn everything. I chop half of the bamboo down out of sheer insanity. Then, I saw a small opening under the cement slab of the deck. We look in the hole and the kitten is crammed in there holding perfectly still like we won't see it. Michelle puts her hand in there to grab it and moments later it's gone. I have no idea where that goes but a few minutes later I hear crying up on the deck! I sneak up there and see it, nestled in between the cactus plants my neighbor grows - he literally has a hundred. I reach slowly, not wanting to startle her but then boing! she springs over to the wall separating us from the Salvation Army center next door. She runs along the wall, through a chain link fence and she's gone!

Tuesday, November 13
On the bus that morning, I cried thinking about that poor little kitty, gone from the safety of her birthplace, without her family, and no one to feed her.

When I get home from work, my neighbors are all out on the back deck. The kitten is next door in the parking lot the Salvation Army uses for donated cars. My neighbor Joe went over before they closed and left a dish of food out for the kitten. It's locked in now and crying its little guts out. It sounds like some poor animal is being tortured. The kitty is close to the fence so I imagine that it wants to get back to my yard, to look for its mom, but just doesn't know how. I call Michelle and she comes over, we survey the situation and decide to tackle it in the morning. I know there are guys over there in the morning when I get ready so we make a plan to go over there at 6am and ask if we can come in to catch the kitty.

When I get back to my place, Joe has shown me that if he pushes on the chain link fence, there's a way I can drop down over the wall and squeeze into the parking lot. I take a flashlight and spend the next hour chasing the crying cat all over the place. It's like a bad video game, "catch the crying kitty!" as it sneaks from car to car and I chase it with the help of my two neighbors with flashlights. "She's under the Volvo!" "Over here under the grey car!" "Now she's over by the boat" I finally give up and leave food, water and a set up of milk crates designed to help her get over the fence and into our yard.

Wednesday, November 14
Michelle gets another volunteer to help with the cat and I go to work. She reports later in the day that the kitten has now descended into the area when the trucks load and unload donations. She's deep into a pile of stuff and can't be retrieved. We're both worried that she isn't going to make it. We've never seen her eat food and she's been scared for several days now, her meowing sounding more and more stressed. Michelle leaves several traps around just in case. That night, I get home late and out of habit, look out my window. I see something moving around and focus to see the KITTEN BACK IN MY YARD! She's not making any noise, just milling around the old familiar places. I can't believe it. I call Michelle to tell her that our cat is not as helpless as we think and will probably be fine whether we catch her or not. I sneak downstairs and hold perfectly still for about 20 minutes. At one point she comes out of the bamboo close to me but not close enough to grab. And then, just like the miracle she performed a few days ago, I hear her meowing up on the deck. I go up there but don't see her and then hear the meowing from downstairs. I'm baffled so I leave a trap up on the deck. After three late nights of this, I'm tired.

Thursday, November 15
Not surprisingly, she's not in the trap and I don't hear or see her anywhere. At this point I'm ready to write her off as an alley cat. I'll leave food out and maybe sometime in the next year I'll capture her and get her fixed. I move the trap downstairs and cover it with bamboo. Then I go to work. That night I came home and heard nothing and saw nothing. I was kind of relieved, done with it. I ate and was about to go to bed when I remembered I had left a trap out. You're not supposed to leave the traps unattended because you can capture another animal or they can hurt themselves being scared in there for several hours but in this case, we were desperate. (In fact, one of the traps at the Salvation Army caught a big grey tomcat, a beautiful animal with huge teeth.) I approach the trap with a flashlight and think I see something in it but figure it's just the food bowl but as I get closer I see the KITTEN IN THE TRAP!

4 DAYS, 8 HOURS and 35 MINUTES into the chase, the jig is up. As Michelle and I walked back to her place with the kitten we named him or her, Chase.

Saturday, November 17
I do work around the house and while at my computer look out the window at least a dozen times. I miss those little kitties. Even though I know it's for the best, I liked having animals around. I hope they all have better lives than they would have had here.

Sunday, November 18
I hear birds this morning and see some sitting on the railing of my deck. It strikes me as something new and I wonder if the lack of a cat's presence welcomed the birds and I start to think about ripping out that f'ing bamboo and planting trees and a real garden. Maybe I could have bees and butterflies and birds visiting me on a regular basis. That would be okay too.

Cavemen, pool sharks and green chemists

A work friend was in New York last week at PopTech, a conference of remarkable people working on innovative projects, which sounded super cool. I'm not sure why half of our department got to go and not the other half but there were a slew of interesting speakers and I just discovered - it's kind of like TED - that you can download their speeches online! (Oooh, I'm totally going to listen to these on the bus to work!)

Anyway, my colleague invited me for drinks to meet a bunch of cool people that she met there, all from San Francisco, at The 500 Club - a bar walking distance from my house that has a giant neon sign that makes it look like it's in Vegas. I think it's funny that "dive bar" has become an official classification but they had Guinness on tap so I have no complaints.


There was an old guy there with a really long white/grey beard and wearing an orange jumpsuit like he just got out of prison. He was clearing tables and playing pool with everyone - in a "you don't really have a choice" kind of way. One of the guys there said he's always there and he's a total shark. He'll let you just barely beat him on the first pool game and then ask you if you want to play again for a beer. All of a sudden he hands you a can of whoop-ass, knocking in all the balls in one or two turns. But all he gets is a beer! Not a very smart pool shark if you ask me.

I met a chemist who defected from Clorox to go to the green side and was now working with Method to make their products even more natural. I talked shop with a documentary filmmaker and met an engineer from a social networking site called High Five, which, he said, is very popular in Asia and is the most popular networking site in Kazakhstan, "the home of Borat!" When a group of us went to dinner at Luna Park after, he announced that was on the Paleo "eat like a caveman and lose weight" diet which he struggled to explain until he admitted that this was only his first day on the diet.

His roommate was a guy in business strategy (whatever the heck that is) and looked like he was about 14. He had an MBA and when I asked him why he went to business school he said he was burned out of the work he was doing and needed to regroup. I figure roughly half of MBA students are there because they can't think of anything better to do or are hoping it will somehow alleviate the malaise of working but I couldn't believe this kid had worked enough to be burned out of anything. He said the "burn out" was after working for four years at around 60 hours a week which sounds like what I was doing before I did something to shake things up - move to LA to pursue acting! I met the most interesting array of folks that night and it reminded me yet again, that San Francisco is way more stimulating than Los Angeles.

San Francisco is more humane!

I am proud to say that I am living in the most humane city in America. No wonder I love this place! The Humane Society of the United States ranked 25 cities by a dozen different criteria of how the population treats animals - number of vegetarian restaurants (good), doggies in the windows of pet stores (bad), fur for sale and on display (also bad), and state representatives who vote compassionately in the case of animals (very good), being some of the criteria - and found the most humane cities on the west coast. They're all my favorites too: 1) San Francisco, 2) Seattle and 3) Portland.

I am constantly in discussion with myself about my relationship to animals. Tonight I heard a dog get hit by a car, I didn't see it because I averted my eyes but it might be worse to hear something like that without a visual. Apparently he bounced off and went running off with his owner chasing after him. I was on a street corner and two people with dogs on leashes were holding them and their dogs were wrestling. Then they stopped and for some reason the owner of the larger dog let go of the leash. He was all riled up from the wrestling and hopping around on the sidewalk while the owner tried to get the leash.

I watched while waiting for the light to change, talking to a friend that was walking with me from the bus stop. It honestly didn't occur to me to try to get the leash but all of a sudden the dog started running toward the street, his owner trailing behind. I thought about lunging for the dog or the leash but I didn't move and before I knew it he was in the street, loping along like he was drunk, running right into oncoming traffic. People screamed and gasped, I turned around to avoid seeing it and BAM, I heard the whack. It was awful, really awful, and I found myself saying "a city is no place for an animal."

This weekend, I was putting around my apartment drinking coffee and I heard a little mewing sound. I love kitties and eagerly looked out the window hoping a kitty had come from somewhere to pay me a visit. What I found though was a mother cat and three fluffy kittens. They were hobbling around like they were just learning to walk. When I came down they scattered into a thicket of bamboo growing in the back. The mom jumped over the fence and watched me warily from the other side. She must have given birth to them here but they only just now came out. I immediately went out to get some cat food at the corner store and put it out. Momma cat ate it and then nursed her babies.

Then I started to wonder what my civic duty is to these animals. Clearly this cat needs to be neutered. And these babies need to be adopted or the city will have three more cats out there procreating in someone's back yard. After some calls, though, it's not as easy as just picking up the phone. This is where my love for animals is seriously tested. Am I willing to go to a store and rent a humane trap and maybe spend a week training the cat so that it will go into the trap? Then take it to the SPCA to be neutered and bring it back? In addition to capturing all the babies (they need to be delivered in separate humane cages) and delivering them to be adopted? I don't really have the time, but what choice do I have? I have to do my part to maintain the most humane city in America!

Getting wired on cocktails

This weekend, I went for drinks one night and dinner another night with a co-worker and some of her friends. In an unprecedented series of moments, I got to reference my beloved Wired magazine with two people, actually involved in the issues, not just watching from the sidelines like me. The first was an attractive guy who had just returned from China. I had literally just told a friend of mine that it was unlikely that I would meet the kind of guy that would interest me, in a bar. He blew that theory out of the water in the first 15 seconds. “Why were you in China?” I ask, to make the kind of small talk that I know I’m supposed to make, not thinking it would lead to actual conversation. I don’t remember exactly what he said, something about going to scope out a project he might be working on, something to do with the environment. Oh, I say excitedly, “China is building a green city, on a wetlands” and I go on to describe in as much detail as I can recall, an article in Wired that I blogged about. Yeah, he says, that’s the company I’m hoping to work for, on that project specifically. So I get to hear about it, from someone who actually knows!

The next night, we met up again and this time my co-worker had brought another couple of friends, married to each other, both doctors. They were beautiful and nice and smart - the kind of people you fall in love with immediately. He’s a neurologist, she’s a dermatologist, but not the kind that gives fat injections and acid peels, unless you’re a burn victim or someone in an equally dire situation. She works in a hospital, helping people who really need it. I get to talking with the neurologist and I get to ask about all kinds of things I’m super excited about: Jared Diamond (who teaches at UCLA where my new friend went to medical school), Oliver Sacks (he worked with him at Columbia) and of course, Wired magazine! I mentioned an article I’d read about these electrodes that are surgically implanted in the brain to stimulate tiny nerves. They’re used to treat Parkinson’s and other diseases where drugs have been ineffective. I learned much more from the doctor, however, and it was more fascinating that you can imagine. He described himself as a mechanic, if the brain was the engine of a car, and said his job was to diagnose the problem and get the thing running again or running properly. He’s a technical person, not prone to the kind of work that involves a lot of guesswork or lack of precision. When I asked him how he chose neurology, he said it was the most intellectual of the medical sciences and he’s a thinker. A thinker working on brains, how apropos! So these little nodes attach to a nerve and are triggered, electronically, to stimulate on a regular pulse. They’re powered by a battery, which is connected by a wire. The wire runs down the inside of the neck, from the brain, to a place in the chest where this small battery that lasts about 12 years in implanted. In the chest!

I never imagined that reading Wired would make such interesting cocktail conversation. Either I’m moving in smarter circles or I’ve moved to San Francisco (or they're the same thing).

Somehow, it DOES all work out

From the beginning of this moving process, what was stressing me out the most was how I was going to get my belongings and furniture from point A to point B. I’d never actually had things worth moving before, and nothing that wouldn’t fit in a car. My dad suggested that I just get rid of everything and start over but that’s his style, he’s attached to nothing and practically lives like a monk with only the bare minimum. But selling what I have and buying new furniture is more work than moving it.

So there was labor to consider – what would make my life easiest? What would make the most sense financially? The most difficult consideration was when to move. Do I wait until I have a point B and move from one apartment to another? What about breaking my lease? I need to clear out ASAP so the landlords can rent and how long can I afford to leave my stuff there? But if I move it to storage do I still use professional movers? And do I store it here or there (and at that point I don’t think I could have specified which location was here and there.)

My good friends kept saying “don’t worry, it will work out,” which is one of those things that’s really irritating to hear when you’re stressed out. I feel like saying “How? HOW will they work out exactly? Don’t I have to make them work out?” But then, as promised, they did. I found an apartment in San Francisco and a few days later Delancey Street returned my call. When I talked to them initially, they said they’d need to come out and look at the apartment and at my stuff – which concerned me because I wasn’t there – but when I got the guy on the phone I said “Look, I’m already living in the Bay Area; my stuff is packed, I’ve filled out two inventory lists already for moving companies, I think it’s 2,500-3,000 pounds and I need to move it next weekend, is there any way we can do this?” To which he miraculously replied, “yeah” and just like that, I had movers arranged.

On the day of the move, a crew of five young guys covered in tattoos, but otherwise clean cut, arrived on my doorstep an hour early. I wasn’t done packing (I’d lied before about being done) and asked them to come back. “Do you want us to help?” they asked, “we can bang that out for you in ten minutes.” They made an otherwise crazy day into an easy one. They were polite and professional, quick and careful. I felt taken care of and actually enjoyed the process. It cost me just over $1,400, which is a very good price. They packed me on a Friday and I my things were delivered Wednesday morning in San Francisco, also about an hour early, by a similarly professional and pleasant crew. They were able to get everything through the slim doorway of my new building and not one thing was damaged or broken. Whoever said, “it will work out” was a genius! (I think it was Steve).

Three whirlwind weeks

I drove up to the Bay Area on August 20 to start the new job the next day. It's only been a little over three weeks and already I've flown back to LA for work twice. It's disorienting to go to San Francisco on the weekend (to apartment hunt), San Mateo in the evenings, San Jose for work and Los Angeles for meetings and not live in any of those places. But by next weekend, my life will start to make a little more sense. Today, even though I'm totally ill and woke up with a cold my co-workers gave me (thank you!), I'm driving to LA to meet the ex-con movers at my place on Friday. They'll deliver my things on Wednesday and by next weekend, I'll be unpacked and living in San Francisco! I'm hoping then I will then be able to blog more regularly.

Weird back bedrooms and hobbit abodes

Once again, I'm sorry for not keeping up with the posts! I really miss blogging but it's just not something I can do at the moment. I don't have my own space and am so easily distracted that just the sounds of other people can keep me from having enough concentration to write. Maybe it's just my writerly excuse but I find it very difficult to formulate original thoughts in the midst of other's activities. I do my best thinking while exercising, driving and showering and well, unless I can write immediately afterwards, the thoughts vanish and all that's left are a few mindless scribbles. This week, however, I've been clocking 12 hour days at the new job and haven't even had time to decipher my scrawl.

But this weekend, I finally found an apartment! And actually I only was looking for three weekends and with very little to choose from, am amazed I found something I like. It's not EXACTLY what I wanted. I would have liked to be in an upstairs apartment, I would have liked to have a garden and I would have liked a bay window, but apartment hunting in San Francisco is a process of determining which collection of compromises is more appealing that the others. I saw an adorable apartment that same day, but at the same price as mine in Santa Monica, it had probably a third of the space. It looked as if someone had shrunk the perfect apartment down to a size that would suit a hobbit. It had a tiny little kitchen with a tiny little refrigerator and a tiny little dishwasher. it was fantastic with bay windows in the main room and the bedroom but again, teeny tiny.

There were others with beautiful views but that sprawled all over the place and made no sense. One had the kitchen split in two - the refrigerator and stove in one room and the sink and cupboards in a dark little cave of it's own. In the back, the fourth room after the kitchen(s) was a "bedroom" that looked like somewhere you'd wake up after being kidnapped by terrorists, or worse, rapists. It was weirder than weird and yet, being SF, there was a woman there absolutely in love with it and selling herself via her credit report to the landlord.

Others have parking or a washer and dryer but are modern carpet boxes without any charm. It's very difficult, unless funds are no issue, to get that perfect apartment. But I found something very nice: well-maintained, charming, bright, spacious, clean and within my price range. It's a five-minute walk to where the company bus will fetch me, a half-block from the laundromat, a whole foods grocery and an array of coffee shops. Less than a mile in any direction are restaurants, shops, parks, and anything else I could need. And so begins my life in the city!

I miss my India

I've been thinking a lot about India lately. Staying with my friend in San Mateo, I have eaten at an Indian restaurant here no fewer than five times in a week. It is possibly the best Indian food I've ever had and only a few blocks away. My friend and her daughter, new to it, refer to my favorite dish Saag Paneer as "the goosh." They can't get enough of it. Strangely, the first time I ate Indian food was in San Francisco, in college, visiting a friend in the city. The restaurant offered a tour of their kitchen and the Tandoori oven and I, of course, took them up on it. And strangely, while I've overplayed my music during the 40-minute commute, the only songs I don't tire of are those from the Bend it Like Beckham soundtrack.

This December will be the ten-year anniversary of my two-month trip to India. I was recently looking up a town that I visited and discovered that all the names of the towns and cities have been changed since I was there. They were starting it when I was there - Bombay was already Mumbai and Madras was already Chennai - but all the names of the little towns (I visited over twenty) have been changed. When I returned to the U.S. I remember someone asking me if I would go back. I think my answer then was that there were so many other places I wanted to go, I couldn't see myself going back to a place I'd already been. But despite the wear and tear on my body from eating the food, the minute the plane left the ground, tears streamed down my cheeks and I cried "I miss my India!"

Ten years later, I still don't miss an opportunity to talk about my travels and many memories are as fresh as the day they happened. There's something about the country, the culture, the people, that get in you. I left India but it never left me and when I read or hear things about it, it's like hearing about a place I used to live or a person I used to love. There has been a lot about India in the news lately. There was a slew of polls in Time magazine and one said that people in India were two-three times more optimistic about their future than Americans. The commentary was that people are happier in a society that's in the process of improving than in one where things are already good. The author surmised that it was a feeling if things are good, they can only get worse.

But progress always has its price and a while back I saw an article about the giant boulders in India - across the Deccan plateau - that are being blown up with dynamite to make way for new construction. Yes, they're that big. One of my favorite places there was a town called Hampi (it's not on the map anymore, they changed the name!), just a little ways from Bangalore - then called the Silicon Valley of India. I can't help but wonder now if there are more Indians in the tech industry in the U.S. than in India. I read that the software industry is so booming in India that engineers from the U.S. can go home to India and take their jobs with them. But I digress, the article was about a society formed to "save the boulders!" of Hyderabad. It even describes one guy who built his house around a boulder, something that should have a been the subject of a Dr. Suess story. I don't usually post professionally published photos but this was just too beautiful and I don't have any of my India photos scanned (they were taken pre-digital!)


I spent time in Hyderabad and I don't remember the giant boulders there, but I do remember them in Hampi. Out in the middle of a huge plain, along a river, hundreds of giant boulders are stacked and sitting in piles, miles away from the nearest mountains. The first question you ask is where did they come from? The second is why are they here? When you focus your eyes you notice the buildings that have been carved out of stone by a civilization thousands of years ago and realize that the "buildings" are the size of a thimble compared to an orange. The boulders are way bigger than they look initially.

Protest is now part of the familiar modern tale of development vs. nature, but nature is starting to be more valuable I think. I also heard on NPR that Indians are protesting the arrival of WalMart that is threatening to replace the "mom and pop shop" with jobs, robbing Indians of their independence and freedom sell what they want, and only benefitting a few. We're starting to realize, as the article says, that once certain things are destroyed, they can't be brought back. Which is why, ten years later, I find myself thinking about India and wanting to go back to that which someday will be no longer.

Jazz as the portal to spirituality

Yesterday, I went to a church service at St. John Coltrane in San Francisco. Only about fifteen people were attending the service and at least five of them were actually running the church. The preacher looked like Richard Pryor and was almost as funny. His sermon was genuine, simple and surprisingly deep. He spent two hours exploring a single scripture allowing for a multitude of fantastic tangents. Every sentence ended with "amen" inviting the audience to respond with "amen," "that's right" or "hallelujah." The gist of it was about the importance of keeping an open mind, an open heart, open eyes and open ears. He said we spend so much time asking for things from the Lord we don't always notice what he's delivering (because we didn't always request it.)

I was invited there by one of my co-workers and it was a friend of hers visiting from France who had suggested it. Ironically, he had seen the church perform in a jazz festival in France and wanted to see them here. Immediately following the sermon, a jazz ensemble from the audience formed: three saxophonists (including the preacher), a woman on bass, someone on keyboards, a drummer, and an electric guitar. Still others got up to sing "praise him, praise him, praise the Lord" over and over while the jazz music belted out all over the city. It was too loud for me in the tiny room so I stepped out and got to enjoy the reactions of those passing by.

Two bicyclists stopped, turned around and had a listen at the door. Several homeless people sloughing by stopped to listen - looking as though salvation was right around the corner. A car stopped at the red light and the cutest dog sat sniffing intently at the air in the direction of the church as if he could smell the music. It garnered a shared giggle between me and the driver. Inside, a new member was being blessed and another apparently regular customer whipped out a board and was tap dancing to the jazz (yes, he had tap shoes on).

Our French friend explained that John Coltrane's music, without any words, is so spiritual to those who love and appreciate it that he was fascinated by the idea of a church that used it as a portal to spirituality. We all enjoyed the service immensely and were both amused that the preacher used a microphone hooked up to a full sound system for this tiny crowd and amazed that the crowd was in fact, so tiny. If you're in San Francisco any time soon, a service is worth attending.