Tag: San Francisco

California/Entertainment/General interest/Health/Lifestyle/Politics & Causes/seniors/USA/Women
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A sucker born every minute: the link between casinos & the Supreme Court

by Fran Johns

Getting something for nothing is tough these days. But that, obviously, doesn’t stop millions of Americans from throwing money away trying, every day. And there’s a lot of money to be made off of those suckers. Witness the current hoopla between two bands of Pomo Indians, the Manchester-Point Arena Band v the Guidiville Band, over the latter’s push to develop a new “gaming” facility in the San Francisco Bay Area. Gaming is the new gambling, gambling having gotten a bad name for some reason, but certainly not the obvious reason that millions of people throw their money away on it and some of them suffer a lot thereafter.

If you don’t want to throw your money away on the slots, however, an anonymous gentleman (Joe Prosflow?) in Daly City, CA, invites you to toss it his way. (I Googled it, but you don’t want to go there; it’s pretty much defunct.) In a bright-yellow-background 2-column ad in today’s San Francisco Chronicle, a 76-year-old male who avows “I believe I have discovered a solution which has eliminated all of my symptoms” — i.e. waking up 3 or 4 times a night for bathroom calls — says he will send you “specific information” for $20 check or money order. Plus a self-addressed stamped envelope. Even though there are those near and dear to me who are known to arise multiple times during the night, I am resisting the temptation to respond to Mr. Prosflow.

But back to the slots. In a former life I had reason to attend occasional conventions in Las Vegas, which required walking through airports and hotel lobbies ad infinitum, all filled largely with little old ladies holding containers of coins and relentlessly feeding them into machines. Being now a little old lady myself, the remembrance of that sight makes me even sadder than ever. This is fun and games? I do not recall seeing anyone smiling. (Forgive me, Las Vegas, I’m sure you have good, smiling citizens there somewhere.)

But casinos cry at the top of their neon lungs about what a fun time you’ll have there! Glamour! Excitement! Not to mention all that money you’ll win! Just as lotteries tout the last gazillion dollar winner. Win big! Jackpot now over a gazillion! Hello? Have you met many gazillion dollar winners?

What brings this to mind, in addition to the interesting just-send-your-money ad, is the fact that casinos and lotteries and other nifty ways to abuse the poor — who are a large percentage of lottery ticket buyers if a smaller percentage of casino-goers — all get your votes. Because they advertise how their profits will make schools better (have you noticed schools getting better on casino taxes?) Or other wonderful benefits they will bring to the ‘hood. They somehow neglect to mention the increased costs they will bring in human miseries and public services required.

They get your votes, or your legislators’ votes, because they have a gazillion dollars to spend in order to get them.

Exactly as multinational corporations will now have a gazillion dollars to dominate every election in the country, large or small, thanks to the Supreme Court ruling that they can spend all the gazillions they want. Leaving us one-person-one-vote suckers still free to send our money to Daly City. But otherwise with not much of a voice.

California/General interest/Health/Lifestyle/Money/Politics & Causes/USA
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Same-sex marriage pays off, proponents argue in California trial

by Fran Johns

When all else fails, talk about money. Proponents of same-sex marriage, in the San Francisco trial now being fought over the issue, brought in the big financial guns yesterday. They were operated by economist Edmund Egan.

Legalizing same-sex marriage would reduce San Francisco’s health and welfare costs because married people are healthier and wealthier than singles, and would generate revenue for government from a surge in weddings, the city’s chief economist testified Thursday at the trial of a lawsuit challenging California’s Proposition 8.

Edmund Egan’s testimony was the first attempt by the plaintiffs – two same-sex couples and the city of San Francisco – to assess the economic effects of the November 2008 ballot measure that amended the state Constitution to define marriage as the union of a man and a woman.

Egan heads the Office of Economic Analysis in the city controller’s office. He argued that married individuals are generally healthier, less likely to need health care and more likely to be insured — all of which translates into greater productivity, more taxes paid, fewer costs to the community. He said it was not possible to put a dollar figure on projected savings, but estimated sales tax revenues would be in the area of $1.7 million and the city could also expect an additional $900,000 in hotel tax revenues from wedding-related spending.

Peter Patterson, lawyer for Protect Marriage, the Prop. 8 campaign committee, said Egan had greatly overstated the measure’s impact.

The 2008 figures reflected a “pent-up demand” for same-sex weddings that would surely decline, Patterson said during cross-examination. He noted that there was a sharp drop in gay and lesbian marriages in Massachusetts in the second year after they were legalized there.

Patterson questioned Egan’s assumption that married same-sex couples would be less likely to incur health care costs than unmarried partners, saying the economist had based his statement on studies of heterosexual couples. Those studies were irrelevant to a “gay-friendly city” like San Francisco, Patterson said.

One friend of this writer, partnered for over 35 years with the man he had hoped to marry “but we missed the window,” said yesterday that he’d be happy to furnish a list of potential weddings to Patterson, with the assurance that it would take a long time for them all to be accomplished. “But I think we’re waiting for the Supreme Court to opine on our marriage-worthiness,” he said.

Same-sex marriage pays off, S.F. economist says.

California/General interest/Lifestyle/Politics & Causes/USA/Women
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Sorry, no photos in Prop 8 courtroom

by Fran Johns

So much for what proponents of marriage equality thought would have been a good idea:

The Supreme Court has indefinitely blocked cameras from covering the high-profile federal court trial on the constitutionality of California’s ban on same-sex marriage.

The high court split 5-4 today, with the conservative justices in the majority.

Now in its third day, the trial in federal court in San Francisco is over the state’s voter-approved ban on gay marriage.

The presiding judge, Vaughn Walker, had proposed posting recordings of the trial on the court’s Web site after several hours of delay and allowing real-time streaming of the trial for viewing in other federal courthouses in California, New York, Oregon and Washington.

Gay rights advocates were calling Judge Walker’s earlier ruling a step towards openness and transparency. Proposition 8 supporters (who hope to uphold the voters’ ban on same-sex marriage in case you’ve been on another planet and missed the back story) were clearly — and probably rightly — afraid their supporters would fear being outed and skip testifying. A thoughtful person who lives in my house suggested it could be a bad precedent.

I personally was looking forward to looking in. But the Supreme Court didn’t consult with any of us. So now we’ll wait to see what they have to say when, as expected, this case gets to their chambers on appeal.

Supreme Court indefinitely blocks cameras from Prop. 8 trial – latimes.com.

General interest/Health/Lifestyle/Money
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CIA casualties highlight endless wars

by Fran Johns

While we were watching bejeweled balls drop in Times Square, or fireworks over San Francisco Bay, pyrotechnics of a different sort were going on as usual around the globe, some of them more or less our fault — because people don’t like us or our government policies or our religious persuasions — some of them happening in our name. The news-making American casualties were not military personnel this time, but civilians in the employ of the Central Intelligence Agency.

The report of this attack sums up where we are, in the last few words of the first paragraph: America’s far-flung wars.

The deaths of seven Central Intelligence Agency operatives at a remote base in the mountains of Afghanistan are a pointed example of the civilian spy agency’s transformation in recent years into a paramilitary organization at the vanguard of America’s far-flung wars.

Is it possible we are fighting too many wars, too far-flung?

If you Google around a while, you can discover (for instance, on a college librarian’s eponymous and aptly named site, topsy.org) that many of the lists of exactly where and with whom we are fighting battles have been removed — but that there are a lot of them out there. We have “overseas operating sites,” which our thankfully now-former president sought to have “optimally positioned to respond to potential 21st century military threats” all over the globe.

PBS NewsHour on New Year’s Day featured one segment in which Georgetown University professor Christine Fair attempted to articulate the various factors involved in current impossible wars going on in the mountainous regions of Pakistan, Afghanistan etc. The Pakistan Taliban, she explained, are actually “a network of networks;” the insurgents include Afghan soldiers, or perhaps non-soldiers dressed in some of the uniforms acquired by stealing a truckload of them, which happened not long ago. PBS’ Ray Suarez then asked if there were any way of stopping this chaos. “I don’t think so,” was the answer.

Hello? Could we think about our foreign policy a while?

Even without easily accessible lists (it is somewhat comforting to know that amateurs can’t Google up strategic maps of these overseas operating sites,) everybody knows we have personnel, uniformed and otherwise scattered around from Germany to South Korea to Thailand to Honduras to wherever. We don’t know how many of them are fighting little wildfire battles, either in person or through U.S.-trained surrogates. In the recent C.I.A. tragedy, the survivors can be forgiven for anger and grief, but some of the response is still unsettling:

There was an air of defiance among intelligence officials on the day after the attack, and some spoke of their fallen comrades using military language.

“There is no pullout,” the American intelligence official said. “There is no withdrawal or anything like that planned.”

Is anybody, anywhere, considering the fact that we can’t keep fighting everybody everywhere, forever? The pundits (reinforced by Defense Department spokespeople) like to say that if we were to pull out — of Iraq, Afghanistan, Uganda, pick your piece of the globe where we’re actively or just-behind-the-lines at war — there would be chaos. But there’s already chaos.

What if we started taking a few of those trillions currently funding endless wars and diverting them into building schools, hospitals, community centers, friends? After the chaos, could we then emerge with more friends and fewer aspiring-martyr enemies?

Maybe not. But it would be nice, just once, in all the interminable debates about terrorists and security and rooting out the bad guys, to hear someone suggest changing course, waging peace. For now, we seem mired in countless un-winnable wars. It would be heartening to think we could get off the Through the Looking Glass course outlined by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in 2002 and quoted by columnist David Sirota today:

As we know, there are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say, we know there’re some things we do not know. But there’re also unknowns unknowns; the ones we don’t know we don’t know.

We know how many wars we are fighting. We know we’re not winning many of them. We know that peace on earth isn’t getting any closer these days.

C.I.A. Takes On Bigger and Riskier Role on Front Lines – NYTimes.com.

California/General interest/Health/Lifestyle/seniors/USA
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Stress, sorrow and depression – – the dark side of the holidays

by Fran Johns

Win McNamee/Getty
Win McNamee/Getty

The photo on the front page of the Sunday New York Times tells the ultimate underside to holiday joy: a young woman, Sarah Walton, with her arms around the tombstone of her husband. The scene is in Arlington cemetery; the simple stone reads LTC James J. Walton and lists the parameters of his brief life, 1967-2008.

In households and hotel rooms everywhere, sadness and loss color the holidays gray. Most of the sadness is of a far lesser sort than that of the grieving widow, but just as real: relationships gone sour, bills that can’t be paid, health that can’t be restored — or the old, familiar pains of too many demands and too little time.

At my San Francisco church, a ‘Blue Christmas’ service was started four years ago by Associate Pastor Catherine Oliver, designed for those who struggle under the weight of everyone else’s festive spirits. Some of the faces she sees are familiar, but many belong to strangers seeking comfort or relief. This year, Oliver reports, attendance was not notably higher — “but there were more men.”

Acknowledging the stress and depression that so often accompany the Thanksgiving-to-New Year’s Day season, the Mayo Clinic recently posted a few tips to help bring a little peace and joy into the season. They are summarized here, in categories found to be common.

First, Mayo Clinic recommends, recognize holiday triggers so you can disarm them before meltdown occurs. Most common among these are:

Relationships. Relationships can cause turmoil, conflict or stress at any time, but tensions are often heightened during the holidays. Family misunderstandings and conflicts can intensify — especially if you’re thrust together for several days. On the other hand, facing the holidays without a loved one can be tough and leave you feeling lonely and sad.

Finances. With the added expenses of gifts, travel, food and entertainment, the holidays can put a strain on your budget — and your peace of mind. Not to mention that overspending now can mean financial worries for months to come.

Physical demands. Even die-hard holiday enthusiasts may find that the extra shopping and socializing can leave them wiped out. Being exhausted increases your stress, creating a vicious cycle. Exercise and sleep — good antidotes for stress and fatigue — may take a back seat to chores and errands. To top it off, burning the wick at both ends makes you more susceptible to colds and other unwelcome guests.

The good news is that even with the worst of causes, holiday blues can be lessened. Most effectively by following a few good recommendations such as these:

Acknowledge your feelings. If someone close to you has recently died or you can’t be with loved ones, realize that it’s normal to feel sadness and grief. It’s OK to take time to cry or express your feelings. You can’t force yourself to be happy just because it’s the holiday season.

Reach out. If you feel lonely or isolated, seek out community, religious or other social events. They can offer support and companionship. Volunteering your time to help others also is a good way to lift your spirits and broaden your friendships.

Be realistic. The holidays don’t have to be perfect or just like last year. As families change and grow, traditions and rituals often change as well. Choose a few to hold on to, and be open to creating new ones. For example, if your adult children can’t come to your house, find new ways to celebrate together, such as sharing pictures, emails or videotapes.

Set aside differences. Try to accept family members and friends as they are, even if they don’t live up to all your expectations. Set aside grievances until a more appropriate time for discussion. And be understanding if others get upset or distressed when something goes awry. Chances are they’re feeling the effects of holiday stress and depression too.

Stick to a budget. Before you go gift and food shopping, decide how much money you can afford to spend. Then stick to your budget. Don’t try to buy happiness with an avalanche of gifts. Try these alternatives: Donate to a charity in someone’s name, give homemade gifts or start a family gift exchange.

Plan ahead. Set aside specific days for shopping, baking, visiting friends and other activities. Plan your menus and then make your shopping list. That’ll help prevent last-minute scrambling to buy forgotten ingredients. And make sure to line up help for party prep and cleanup.

Learn to say no. Saying yes when you should say no can leave you feeling resentful and overwhelmed. Friends and colleagues will understand if you can’t participate in every project or activity. If it’s not possible to say no when your boss asks you to work overtime, try to remove something else from your agenda to make up for the lost time.

Don’t abandon healthy habits. Don’t let the holidays become a free-for-all. Overindulgence only adds to your stress and guilt. Have a healthy snack before holiday parties so that you don’t go overboard on sweets, cheese or drinks. Continue to get plenty of sleep and physical activity.

Take a breather. Make some time for yourself. Spending just 15 minutes alone, without distractions, may refresh you enough to handle everything you need to do. Take a walk at night and stargaze. Listen to soothing music. Find something that reduces stress by clearing your mind, slowing your breathing and restoring inner calm.

Seek professional help if you need it. Despite your best efforts, you may find yourself feeling persistently sad or anxious, plagued by physical complaints, unable to sleep, irritable and hopeless, and unable to face routine chores. If these feelings last for a while, talk to your doctor or a mental health professional.

None of the above can bring back a loved one, or make a new job appear. But perhaps they can help you through to a better and brighter New Year.

Stress, depression and the holidays: 10 tips for coping – MayoClinic.com.

California/General interest/Lifestyle/USA
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The face of homelessness

by Fran Johns

My friend Kevin told me this afternoon that he will be going to Bakersfield to stay. St. Vincent de Paul, he says, bought him a bus ticket for Sunday. I will be seriously sad to see him go.

Kevin lives somewhere, he’s never explained and I don’t press, in the rich-man/poor-man city of San Francisco. Wherever he spends his nights, he spends his days, mostly, on a bench in Mountain Lake Park near my home, watching the seagulls and ducks on the water, the pigeons on the grass, children on the swings. The par course which functions as my personal gym loops around the park, leading me past Kevin’s bench just after the hop-kicks and before the newly replaced (thanks, Park & Rec!) push-up bars. Kevin finds my exercises highly amusing.

Kevin has skin like polished coal, a bushy Afro usually tucked under a leather cap that would work well in Moscow, and a grin that displays a wide row of crooked, gap-filled bottom teeth. He has few. if any, top teeth. His wardrobe, which also includes an outsized leather jacket and very heavy boots, seldom changes, nor does his mood, which is sunny with occasional fog.

Many months ago I introduced myself, mid-workout. Kevin has never asked for a handout, but I took to offering him a dollar for a cup of coffee and it’s never been refused. Once recently, while he was dozing in the sunshine by the playground, I stuck a folded dollar bill into the same pocket occupied by his large, square hand, hoping it wouldn’t fall out and disappear. The next day he confirmed, with a huge guffaw, that it had been found. “And I knowed it was you come around!!” he said, pleasing me immensely.

Sometimes, when the weather has been cold and rainy or the fog too oppressive I do not see Kevin for a while. “I been going to the liberry,” he tells me later, a testament probably more to the warmth of the nearby building and its inhabitants than to our educational system — but with Kevin you never know.

When I am not constrained by time and the cares of the world I join Kevin on his bench. We talk about the water birds, the golfers far across the small lake, or the construction going on farther across and to the west, where the Presidio Trust is spending your tax money to convert the old Veteran’s Administration Hospital into apartments which will have drop dead gorgeous views. Kevin, on my recommendation, once walked up there to see what it is like. That was about the time when, on a beautiful, balmy San Francisco day I remarked to him that I thought I was the luckiest person in the world. He said, “I be lucky too.” That is a comment to take to the bank.

Because he is of indeterminate age and mental agility, I would worry about Kevin going off to the far country of Bakersfield. But he says he has family there, is looking forward to the bus ride and thinks it will be swell. I just hope they have a park with birds and children to entertain him, and perhaps an occasional jogger to join him on the bench.

Still, I will feel his absence. Never once has Kevin failed to say, as I pass on to the push-up bars, “Have a guht one!” Coming from behind an unfathomable grin, from a man presumably alone on the mean streets of urban America, who considers himself lucky, that is a blessing one doesn’t always get in the middle of a fitness course. And a blessing one can always use.

General interest/Politics & Causes
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Moving Mom & Dad — into a Village

by Fran Johns

What about moms and dads who really don’t want to move?

The problem of where to go and what to do about housing in the sometimes not-so-golden years has an assortment of solutions for those who prefer (and can afford) the retirement community or any of the multitude of assisted living communities around. But for those who are bound and determined to stay put in the old house or the long-familiar apartment? A collection of obstacles begins to accumulate.

Enter the village.

Swiftly catching on around the country, aging-in-place “villages” are designed to help  members overcome those obstacles by providing a variety of programs and services – while the members stay put. The prototype was Boston’s Beacon Hill Village, founded in 2001, which offers “groceries to Tai Chi to cultural and social activities to home care.” Others have popped up in states ranging from Colorado to New York, Florida to Nebraska, Massachussetts to Hawaii.

San Francisco Village was the second, after Avenidas in Palo Alto, to get off the drawing boards and into action in California. Although each Village differs from others, SFV illustrates many of the attractions that are drawing in the stay-put crowd. The organization began with some local grants and individual donations, and is sustained now by annual membership fees.

Sarah Goldman agreed, after a good bit of arm-twisting, to be a poster girl for SFV in upcoming stories for the neighborhood’s New Fillmore newspaper. Sarah was among the first to join the organization, and in many ways typifies the village member-enthusiast: fit, active and fiercely independent at 80, she plans to stay that way as long as humanly possible. Her first move, as a Village member, was in support of someone older still and desperately in need of help: her landlady. Goldman could see that the landlady, who also lived alone, was becoming forgetful and increasingly unkempt – the distress signals that often propel seniors into care facilities. So she began by talking the landlady into joining also. This paved the way for calling in, with the landlady’s approval, a wide-ranging group of service providers: house cleaners, organizers, financial assistance people, personal care helpers. All had been vetted by SFV. Their help has now enabled both landlady and tenant to keep right on aging in place.

Goldman also quickly started a program patterned after one she had organized when working with an assisted living community. SFV’s play-reading group was an immediate hit among those seeking socialization and intellectual stimulation. Three necessities of life — social, physical and mental fitness — added to issues such as those dealt with by the landlady, add up to the heart of the Village. Members hope that by accessing things like this while staying on familiar turf their golden years may indeed stay shiny.

This one hopes that SFV membership will help keep the contributions of this space emanating from this laptop on this Sacramento Street kitchen counter for a very long time to come.

California/General interest/Lifestyle/Politics & Causes/seniors/USA
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God, Thanksgiving & Mother Theresa

by Fran Johns

Former San Francisco Mayor Art Agnos spoke briefly, and with holiday hilarity, this morning to several hundred Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists and assorted other believers at the annual San Francisco Interfaith Thanksgiving Breakfast — “the biggest crowd I ever addressed at seven in the morning.” The event highlighted some of the work the SFIC does in the city: an annual winter shelter for homeless men, a citywide disaster preparedness program, a variety of ongoing efforts to promote understanding, cooperation and general interfaith goodwill. Agnos told a tale of encountering Mother Theresa which is condensed and paraphrased below as a Thanksgiving present from this space.

Coming home one Sunday night during his tenure, the mayor got a message (this was in the late 1980s, pre-cellphones) from his wife saying Mother Theresa was at their door. (“What should I do?” “Let her in.”)  When he walked into the living room, sure enough, there was the diminutive nun in her blue and white habit, seated on the Agnos’ sofa with another nun on each side. She wanted the mayor, she explained, to secure a particular piece of property for her good works. It was after 9 PM.

“I’ll get right on it, first thing in the morning,” Mayor Agnos said.

“No,” said the tiny nun in her quiet voice. “God’s work does not wait until morning.”

The property in question was in an area of town into which few ventured after dark. When that factor was mentioned as cause for caution, however, Mother Theresa would have none of it. “God,” she said in her still-quiet voice, “will protect us.”

So the mayor, the three nuns, the mayor’s wife (who wasn’t about to miss this experience) and a police bodyguard Mayor Agnos invited along just in case God wasn’t paying attention, climbed into a police car and drove to the building in question. Working their way through a fence which had long before been erected around the property, they walked around the back to find a small group of homeless men gathered around a fire. It was not only getting later all the time, it was mid-winter.

“Oh,” the men said in unison, “it’s Mother Theresa.” She blessed them. Then the mayor asked if the building did indeed belong to the city. “Well, yes,” they said, “but we’ve been living here for several years and nobody’s bothered us.” So the mayor assured the nun that he would get to work on her request first thing in the morning.

She was not finished. Next, she wanted to see about another piece of property, this one necessitating a trip to San Francisco General, the City/County hospital of last resort for citizens in need. By now it was getting on towards midnight.

At that hour at San Francisco General, Mayor Agnos explained, most of the people on site are the cleaning crews and base-level helpers — all of whom immediately recognized Mother Theresa. “When we got ready to leave,” said Agnos, “it was like a football huddle. Everybody in the area gathered around this tiny nun you couldn’t even see in the middle of the crowd.”

“When you die and go to heaven,” said Mother Theresa to her fellow laborers, “you will meet God. And God will bless you for your good work.”

“So,” concluded the Mayor as he opened his arms to indicate those around the room, “when you die and go to heaven, you will meet God. And he or she, whomever, will bless you for your good work.”

Makes you thankful to be in the presence of so many people doing good work.

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