The citizens of California seem to have a talent for pioneering one regrettable socio-political phenomenon after another, years before the country as a whole heedlessly tries the same thing. There are too many examples to catalogue: The embrace of Ronald Reagan, tax cut fever, alarmist immigration phobia and—most salient to today’s headlines—the election of a cartoonish Republican celebrity with zero government experience.
We Californians often react to the ensuing sense of déjà vu—much like a teenager whose dad has just discovered Vampire Weekend. But writer and sociologist Manuel Pastor thinks we’d be better off cooling it with the rolling eyes and air of miffed superiority.
“The reluctance to learn from California has been there for a while,” he says. “The country always looks to its founding [East] Coast, and not to its left coast. So, we in California can either talk about this in an arrogant fashion, or we can talk about this with the humility of someone who is in recovery. Because we are. This state is in recovery from its own addiction to allowing race to divide the polity, its own addiction to quick-fix schemes, its addiction to ‘Only I can fix this problem’—which was Arnold’s pitch as well as Trump’s. We can puff out our chest and brag about some wisdom we have, or we can share the lessons from some of the mistakes we’ve made with some humility.”
Pastor is the author of a new book titled State of Resistance: What California’s Dizzying Descent and Remarkable Resurgence Mean for America’s Future. It’s a deep dive into the political, social and cultural upheavals that have characterized California’s history since the middle of the last century, and how those upheavals have predicted what the U.S. at large was to experience later.
Pastor likes to call California “America fast-forward,” and asserts that the demographic anxiety, the economic uncertainty and the profiteering from political polarization that has characterized the Trump Era is essentially the story of California in the 1990s.
“Think about all that happened [in California in the ’90s]—Prop. 187, the elimination of bilingual education, the elimination of affirmative action,” says Pastor, a former UC Santa Cruz student who also taught at UCSC for a decade. “We thought that scapegoating immigrants would somehow recover the economy. It didn’t work. And it sounds a lot like what the nation is doing right now.”
State of Resistance was not conceived as a reaction to the election of Donald Trump, says Pastor. In fact, he had begun work on the book long before the 2016 presidential election, and was anticipating a Hillary Clinton presidency. “I started writing this book mostly because I was afraid that what happened when Obama won would continue to happen when Hillary won.” He’s referring to heavy Democratic Party electoral losses in state Houses during the Obama years.
After the 2016 election, Pastor’s calculus changed. Led by majority Democrats and Gov. Jerry Brown, California began to position itself in opposition to the Trump administration on a number of issues, and Pastor began to trace California’s recent transformation to a citadel of blue-state values. But he’s careful not to go overboard on the California Dream narrative, pointing to huge challenges the state faces in such areas as income inequality and the ongoing housing crisis.
Pastor stresses that State of Resistance is not only for Californians. It’s an American story, and as such, his book has been getting attention in states beyond California.
“It’s on people’s radar for a number of reasons,” he says. “When you look at the parallels between the U.S. today and California in the ’90s, it’s so obvious that people are really intrigued. And within the state, we’ve lived through this dramatic 25-year transformation. And people are excited to see the story being told in a way in which they can see themselves in it.”
Manuel Pastor, Bay Area Book Festival, Sat., April 28, 1:30pm, Veterans’ Memorial Building, Auditorium, 1931 Center St., Berkeley; baybookfest.org.
It is hard not to get cynical about the food/restaurant business when it seems like every other day a large corporation swallows another “little guy” and inevitably the quality of the smaller entity quietly erodes. With chain restaurants or multi-units, this scenario typically plays out with a gradual diminution of food quality.
Fifteen-year-old Pacific Catch, with eight locations throughout the Bay Area, appears to be changing that paradigm. Six months ago the company’s original CEO, Keith Cox, returned to the group after leaving in 2012. For those old enough to remember, Cox also started World Wrapps with several partners in San Francisco in 1995. I recall thinking that he was a bit ahead of his time with those crazy multi-colored tortillas.
Today, Pacific Catch has embraced a sustainability model, and timing seems spot-on. Along with hiring a director of sustainability, the restaurant has partnered with several organizations—including the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch—that require Pacific Catch to source its seafood from environmentally responsible places.
Here’s the upside of a multi-unit business when it’s done right: The revenue generated from multiple locations allows the company to grow (scale), purchase good-quality ingredients and pay for talent in the kitchen. From all accounts, Pacific Catch is doing just that. Its recent Clean Catch menu featured several inspired dishes, including Citrus Poke Tacos made with cubed kanpachi fish, orange, yuzu, pomegranate and ginger. The Salmon Bowl was a delicious medley of flavors—quinoa, grilled salmon, brown rice, soy tahini drizzle, cilantro-pepita pesto, avocado and more.
Navigating the food world is no easy task these days—and seafood is one of the most restricted facets of the industry. But if Pacific Catch stays the course, and continues to take a mindful approach to its expanding business, let’s hope for smooth sailing ahead.
Pacific Catch, 133 Corte Madera Town Center, Corte Madera; 415/927-3474; pacificcatch.com.
“Remember what I always say, ‘Safety lies in the risk.’”
Samantha Paris, gently waving her arms with each syllable she speaks, faces a student, Elizabeth Frazier, through the glass of the recording studio. About a dozen other students watch as Paris does her thing.
“Now let’s try that again,” she tells Frazier, who’s just been practicing a line of advertising copy for Stouffer’s macaroni and cheese, performing it in the bright-and-chipper style of Julie Andrews.
“This time, let’s do something different,” Paris says. “This time, I want you to seduce us.”
“Oh, god!” Frazier says, laughing.
“So let’s try for the color violet,” Paris continues. “Give me super sensual and super sexy and do it in a nice, low pitch. Take a nice deep breath in, let it out slowly, and then say the line. Ready? Let’s go.”
“There’s one very good reason,” Frazier begins, “why Stouffer’s hasn’t changed its macaroni and cheese recipe … in 35 years. You’d never forgive us.”
She nails it. Never has macaroni and cheese sounded sexier. To the raucous cheers of the class, Paris says, “Elizabeth … that was beautiful. That’s voice acting people! Now, let’s try orange—really nurturing and warm. Ready? Go!”
It’s a Saturday afternoon at Voicetrax voice-over academy in Sausalito, and founder Paris is teaching an intermediate level two-session script analysis class. The students have been working at identifying various ways to deliver advertising copy, by identifying different “colors” that are suggested in the text. This technique is designed to help the actors engage their full range of vocal abilities.
They’ve also learned little tricks to help them get out of their own comfort zones, including singingthe copy in the style of opera, rap or country western, just to bypass the tendency to overthink their performances. Clearly, such techniques are working. After all, Paris has been doing this kind of work, and teaching it to thousands of students, for the last 30 years.
“My teaching is very unconscious,” Paris says, after the class. “I don’t think that hard about it. I just do it. It’s a stream of consciousness. For me, it’s all about having an open heart, and listening. I know that some of my students are going through a lot, and I know I need to acknowledge that.”
In today’s class, for example, there are students who’ve recently overcome strokes or heart attacks, unplanned retirements, divorces, break-ups and more. Some suffer crippling stage fright. Others struggle with low self-esteem, and view voice-acting as a way to come face-to-face with their anxieties. Paris says that she does whatever it takes—coaxing and sweet-talking, joshing and teasing, delivering hilarious F-bomb-laden encouragements or offering plain, honest, straight-taking criticism—to facilitate the necessary breakthroughs.
“This sounds a little corny, but I’ve learned that if I can just be authentic, and come from love, it’s going to be OK, and I’m going to say the right things,” Paris says. “We all have our baggage, of course. We talk about this all the time here. That microphone doesn’t lie. If you are hurting, or angry or whatever, that’s going to come out—and the microphone will reveal it.”
Voicetrax currently employs 35 experienced teachers, has more than 300 students and offers 80 different voice-over courses. Courses are offered in two six-month “semesters,” and take place morning, noon and night, seven days a week. “That’s crazy, huh?” Paris says. “I mean, ‘How did this happen!’ right?”
That’s a question that she answers in Finding the Bunny, a charmingly crafted memoir of her journey from fanciful, insecure, TV-obsessed Los Angeles kid to her current position as the owner of the largest voice-over training program in the country. Born in Southern California, Paris dreamed early of becoming an actress, a goal that was not enthusiastically supported by her parents, who struggled with alcoholism, and often made her feel less intelligent than her more bookish brother and sister. As she describes in the book, she eventually came to see the Playboy magazine bunny logo—an image (hidden somewhere on the cover of the magazine each month) that made a regular appearance in her home, thanks to her older brother—as a kind of symbol for searching for one’s hopes and dreams.
She soon set out to find her own “bunny,” which in her case, she knew, would have something to do with acting. At the age of 16, Paris landed an agent, and quickly began getting work in front of the camera (including prominent roles on James at 16, Touched by an Angel, ABC Afterschool Specials and others), as well as in front of a microphone (including voice work on Jem and the Holograms, Bionic Six and thousands of commercials). It was as a voice actor that she says she found the most freedom to become whoever she wanted to be.
After moving to the Bay Area in 1988, and choosing Mill Valley as her home, she found herself teaching voice-over (almost by accident) to a rapidly increasing number of eager Bay Area students. That was three decades ago.
Students rehearse at Voicetrax. Photo by Lisa Keating Photography.
Almost immediately, under the business name Voicetrax San Francisco, Paris’s reputation as a teacher took off, boosted by stellar word-of-mouth from her students, and by regular appearances on KGO’s The Ronn Owens Show, where she would “audition” wannabe voice actors live on the radio. Eventually, Paris’ operation was moved from her living room to downtown Sausalito, where the Voicetrax academy was built.
“People are often surprised at how much available work there is in the voiceover industry,” Paris says. “And that’s specifically true here in the Bay Area. Thanks to Silicon Valley, the average Bay Area voice actor, with a talent agent, can do very well in this business.”
Paris is taking a break in an adjoining studio. Just outside the door, another, even more raucous class—this one focusing on video game voice-overs—is taking place. A quick glance around the room shows a fairly even mix of male and female students.
“When I first started in this industry, in the ’70s, 90 percent of all voice-over work was being done by men,” Paris acknowledges. “Nowadays, it’s about 60 percent men, 40 percent women. So things are getting better.”
Another change in the industry, she points out, is that it’s no longer necessary to have an agent to land voice-acting gigs, though Paris insists that it is still the best route toward getting steady work.
“Having an agent puts you at the top tier of voice actors,” she says, “but there’s now a tier right below that.”
There are, she explains, a number of websites where one can audition for various voice acting jobs, usually for a yearly fee.
“The pay is lower for those jobs, and most of the work isn’t quite so sexy, but there are jobs available at that just-below-having-an-agent level,” Paris says.
Obviously, some people do well with such “second-tier” approaches. “But a lot of them don’t,” Paris says, “because there’s a tendency for people to sign up, pay their money and start auditioning before they really know what they’re doing. Back in my day, when there were just talent agents, you had to study your craft, and study some more, until you were fucking great. You were not going to be signed by an agent until you were great. And that takes a lot of work, and a lot of dedication. If you want to be successful, you have to put in the effort. You have to do the work. And you have to believe in yourself.
“And that,” she continues, “takes work, too.”
Ironically, Paris says she found it harder to follow her own advice when it came to writing Finding the Bunny. She first set out to write the book four years ago, in hopes of releasing it in time for Voicetrax’s 30th anniversary.
“But I was scared out of my mind,” she says. “At first, I hired a ghostwriter, because I assumed I wasn’t smart enough to write it myself. Growing up, I was always told I was stupid. My brother and sister were the readers in our house. They always had their noses in a book. I always had my nose buried in the television. It ultimately paid off, since I’ve had a career doing cartoons and commercials and stuff. But when you don’t read as a kid, and everyone else does, you can easily develop a self-identity as the stupid one.”
After spending “a small fortune” on the ghostwriter, Paris says that she wasn’t happy with the way the book was turning out.
“It finally dawned on me, ‘Well shit, Samantha. If you want a memoir, you’re going to have to write it yourself.’ But I was still petrified, just frozen in fear. I always talk about how safety lies in the risk. But I was so scared to dive in and start writing.”
What finally gave her the courage, she says, were her students.
“To me, they are so brave,” she says. “It was pretty obvious that I had to do what they do when they come in here. I had to take the risk. So I basically just said, ‘Oh Sammy, fuck it. Just start and see what happens.’”
It took another three years, but she finally completed the book, with a forward by actor Peter Coyote. “It’s so funny,” she says. “I constantly tell my students that anything they set their minds to, they can do. But I’d had such a hard time believing that for myself. When the moment finally came that the truck arrived at my house, and 1,000 copies of my book were delivered to my garage, I was shaking so hard that my husband had to open the first box and put the book in my hands.”
As for what’s next, Paris says that she’d love to see the book developed into a television show about the voice-over industry. Maybe she’ll even try writing another book. And of course, she plans to continue training new voice actors.
“I’ve always had the philosophy that you have to just enjoy the journey, work hard, be authentic, come from love and see where that takes you,” she says. “I swear to God, that’s how I live my life. The older I get, the more I’m into having an awareness of what the universe is telling us. I truly believe this book is going to take me someplace else, and I’m really looking forward to finding out what that is.”
Samantha Paris and some of her students will be performing sections from ‘Finding the Bunny’ on Sunday, April 15 at Book Passage, 51 Tamal Vista Blvd., Corte Madera, 4pm; bookpassage.com.
North Bay voters may wake up on November 7 to the news that there are two progressives representing the region in Congress—and one of them is a bona fide Berniecrat.
Nils Palsson is running against Blue Dog Democrat Mike Thompson in California’s 5th Congressional District, decrying the incumbent’s long list of big-money contributions from the corporate world as he’s launched a Sanders-friendly campaign—and accepting individual contributions of $27.
Palsson, 32, is a working dad and was a delegate for the Vermont senator in the 2016 Democratic primary. The Santa Rosa resident is running as an independent this year. It’s his second stab at the seat, which Thompson has held since 1999.
Palsson ran in 2016 and came in third behind Thompson and Republican Carlos Santamaria in the primary that year. The pro-gun Thompson went on to handily dispatch Santamaria by a margin of 3–1 in the general election. His district includes Santa Rosa, Napa County and parts of Contra Costa and Solano counties.
But there’s no Republican in the race for the 5th this year, and Palsson believes he’s got a real shot at taking down Thompson from the left. Especially since Thompson may actually be—the Zodiac Killer! In a recent campaign e-blast, Palsson flatly declared, “I’m running for Congress against the infamous Zodiac Killer.” What?
The jibe played off the difficulty in defeating a popular and long-standing incumbent. An editorial that ran in the Sonoma Index-Tribune in 2016 noted that “for Thompson to lose, something extraordinary would have to happen, like he were revealed to be the never-captured Zodiac Killer from the 1970s.”
Two years later, the Zodiac Killer has still not been caught, and Palsson’s having some fun-not-fun with it. He goes on to immediately say that he’s joking. “Let me make it abundantly clear,” Palsson writes. “Mike Thompson is not the Zodiac Killer. But there is a hidden truth that, if revealed, might have roughly the same effect on local voters as if he were to be revealed as the notorious murderer of yore.”
The point about Thompson, he says, is that he represents the worst of the worst when it comes to the constellation of his contributor base. “The fact is that Thompson has accepted an alarming number of yuge political contributions from lobbyists representing some of the world’s most destructive corporations,” he writes.
Palsson is intent on pushing a people-first agenda, he says, that’s focused on wage-equity and Medicare for all, dealing with the student debt crisis and pushing for higher wages. All very Bernie. He’s also weighing in on gun violence as part of his pitch to voters, and says that Thompson has come up short on that front despite his prominence on the issue among Democrats. “I haven’t seen visionary leadership from him on any issue,” says Palsson, “including the gun thing.”
Palsson adds that he’s not calling for the repeal of the Second Amendment. “I don’t go that far,” he says and notes that the Second Amendment’s original intention was as a bulwark against tyranny. Indeed, he’s wary of ongoing efforts to turn the gun-control debate into a push for legislation to raise the legal age for gun ownership to 21. “I’m not entirely sold on that,” he says, arguing that when youth turn 18, they’re granted full citizenship—and can be given a gun and sent off to war. And he’s got his own war to fight between now and the June primary. Palsson’s hoping to nab some high-level endorsements, and says he needs to ramp up the fundraising.
“I feel pretty strong going into the primary,” he says, and if he makes it through and squares off against Thompson in the general, who knows. “People will come out of the woodwork,” he says.
This week in the Pacific Sun, our cover story, ‘Passion Project,’ profiles The Indie Alley, a new co-working space in Fairfax. On top of that, we check in with candidates for the Marin County District Attorney position, talk to Alan Turner, who makes Handsome Carver’s nut spreads, review the San Francisco Playhouse production ‘The Effect’ and chat with Peter Rowan about his new album. All that and more on stands and online today!
As the official bard to the court of King Reagan, Steven Spielberg may well look back at the 1980s as happy times. The 1980s-filia of Ready Player One is unsettling to those who don’t consider that decade a paradise lost. From the numerous references in Ready Player One to Back to the Future, released in 1985, it’s clear that Spielberg considers this a particularly evocative film, a nostalgia trip that ends in the rewriting of history to make for a stronger, richer suburbia.
Others would consider the definitive piece of 1980s zeitgeist as the 1989 Batman, summing up the grief, squalor and expressionistic horror of the cities. Such are the conditions in the OASIS of the year 2044, a virtual reality Imaginationland. Mechagodzilla battles Brad Bird’s Iron Giant from the 1999 movie, the stabby doll Chucky bursts through a windshield and King Kong attacks.
Before the game-master James Halliday (Mark Rylance) died, he deeded the OASIS to whoever could find three hidden keys—“invisible keys in a dark room.” This Willy Wonka-like challenge attracted Ohio’s Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan), an orphan in an Ohio trailer park. Wade named his avatar Parzifal in honor of the seeker of the Holy Grail. Inside the OASIS’ games he encounters a famous avatar—an unnaturally big-eyed living anime called Artemis, actually a shy girl named Samantha (Olivia Cooke).
The OASIS is under danger of takeover by the much-loathed Innovative Online Industries, chaired by the evil capitalist Nolan Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn). He’s aided by his hulking enforcer I-R0k (T. J. Miller) and his glamorous henchwoman F’Nale Zandor (the half-Norwegian half-Nigerian Hannah John-Kamen). These evildoers operate a debtor’s prison/slave labor colony for those who’ve lost their money wagering on these games.
It’s all based on Ernest Cline’s popular novel of ideas—a few of the ideas are even Cline’s own. The quest is said to be about love, but it’s more plausibly about gain and career.
Before he was a bluegrass legend, singer/songwriter Peter Rowan was a young man playing in a band with the iconic Bill Monroe in the 1960s. One day, Monroe asked Rowan to drive him to Clinch Mountain in Virginia to meet a friend. That experience would stay with Rowan for life.
“He didn’t explain what we were going to do,” Rowan says. “We got to the top of a small rise, a cleared field. And there was Carter Stanley sitting on a log.”
With his brother Ralph, Carter Stanley was as influential to bluegrass as Monroe was, playing as the Stanley Brothers and the Clinch Mountain Boys for 20 years. In that brief encounter, Rowan says he got from Stanley an endorsement as a bluegrass boy. “It was totally memorable,” Rowan says. Now, more than 50 years later, Rowan revisits that meeting with the new album, Carter Stanley’s Eyes, out on April 20.
“Bluegrass was a musical innovation that is still developing today and most of the people that have been able to, have gone beyond bluegrass, people like Bela Fleck,” Rowan says. “But, you know, it’s good to come back to the roots. That’s why I wanted to make the record.”
This week, Rowan shows off a different side of his musical personality when he performs in Marin with his outfit Twang & Groove, a collaboration with legendary pedal steel player Bobby Black, mandolin payer Sharon Gilchrist, bassist Paul Knight and drummer Ken Owen.
“They’re all people I love to play with,” Rowan says. “We’re just trying to put together a good concert of songs, some we don’t normally do.”
Twang & Groove, Saturday, April 7, Osher Marin JCC, 200 N San Pedro Rd., San Rafael; 8pm; $25-$35; 415/444-8000.
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Eighty-three-year-old author Harlan Ellison has had a long and successful career. In the course of publishing hundreds of literary works in seven different genres, he has won numerous awards. But when he was in his 30s, there was an interruption in the upward arc of his career. The film production company Walt Disney Studios hired him as a writer. During his first day on the job, Roy Disney overheard Ellison joking with a co-worker about using Disney characters in an animated pornographic movie. Ellison was fired on the spot. I am by no means predicting a comparable event in your life, Aries. On the contrary. By giving you this heads-up, I’m hoping that you’ll be scrupulous and adroit in how you act in the early stages of a new project—so scrupulous and adroit that you will sail on to the next stages.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Are you an evolving Taurus or an unevolving Taurus? Are you an aspiring master of gradual, incremental progress or a complacent excuse-maker who secretly welcomes inertia? Will the theme of your next social media post be “The Smart Art of Compromise” or “The Stingy Glory of Stubbornness”? I’m hoping that you will opt for the former rather than the latter in each of the three choices I just offered. Your behavior in the coming weeks will be pivotal in your long-term ability to animate your highest self and avoid lapsing into your mediocre self.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): If you fly in a passenger jet from New York to London, the trip usually takes more than six hours. But on January 8, 2015, a powerful jet stream surging across the North Atlantic reduced that time significantly. With the wind’s extra push, several flights completed the trip in five hours and 20 minutes. I suspect that you’ll have comparable assistance in the course of your upcoming journeys and projects, Gemini. You’ll feel like the wind is at your back.
CANCER (June 21-July 22): Actor Keanu Reeves’ career ascended to a higher level when he appeared as a lead character in the film Speed. It was the first time he had been a headliner in a big-budget production. But he turned down an offer to reprise his starring role in the sequel, Speed 2. Instead he toured with his grunge band Dogstar and played the role of Hamlet in a production staged by a local theater company in Winnipeg, Manitoba. I admire him for being motivated more by love and passion than by fame and fortune. In my estimation, Cancerian, you face a choice that in some ways resembles Keanu’s, but in other ways doesn’t. You shouldn’t automatically assume that what your ego craves is opposed to what your heart yearns for and your soul needs.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): A Leo sculptor I know is working on a 40-foot-long statue of a lion. Another Leo friend borrowed $30,000 to build a recording studio in her garage so she can pursue her quixotic dream of a music career. Of my other Leo acquaintances, one is writing a memoir of her time as a black-market orchid smuggler, another just did four skydives in three days and another embarked on a long-postponed pilgrimage to Slovenia, land of her ancestors. What about you? Are there any breathtaking challenges or smart gambles you’re considering? I trust that you can surf the same astrological wave.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): How sexy is it possible for you to be? I’m referring to authentic soul-stirring sexiness, not the contrived, glitzy, counterfeit version. I’m alluding to the irresistible magnetism that wells up in you when you tap into your core self and summon a reverent devotion to your life’s mission. However sexy it is possible for you to be, Virgo, I suggest that you unleash that magic in the coming weeks. It’s the most reliable strategy for attracting the spiritual experiences, material resources and psychological support you need.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): According to my analysis of the cosmic omens, your impact is rising. You’re gaining influence. More people are tuning in to what you have to offer. And yet your stress levels also seem to be increasing. Why is that? Do you assume that having more power requires you to endure higher tension? Do you unconsciously believe that being more worried is the price of being more responsible? If so, banish that nonsense. The truth is this: The best way to manage your growing clout is to relax into it. The best way to express your growing clout is to relax into it.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): The immediate future will challenge you to revisit several fundamental Scorpio struggles. For best results, welcome these seeming intrusions as blessings and opportunities, and follow these guidelines: 1. Your control over external circumstances will increase in direct proportion to your control over your inner demons. 2. Your ability to do what you want will thrive to the degree that you stop focusing on what you don’t want. 3. Your skill at regulating and triumphing over chaos will be invincible if you’re not engrossed in blaming others.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): I’m about to say things that sound extraordinary. And it’s possible that they are in fact a bit overblown. But even if that’s the case, I trust that there is a core of truth in them. So rejoice in their oracular radiance. First, if you have been hoping for a miracle cure, the next four weeks will be a time when you’re more likely than usual to find it or generate it. Second, if you have fantasized about getting help to address a seemingly irremediable problem, asking aggressively for that help now will lead to at least a partial fix. Third, if you have wondered whether you could ever retrieve a lost or missing part of your soul, the odds are more in your favor than they’ve been in a long time.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): The French government defines books as an “essential good,” along with water, bread and electricity. Would you add anything to that list of life’s basics? Companionship? Stories? Deep sleep? Pleasurable exercise and movement? Once you identify your “essential goods,” I invite you to raise the level of reverence and care you give them. Take an oath to treat them as holy treasures. Boost your determination and ability to get all you need of their blessings. The coming weeks will be a favorable time to enhance your appreciation of the fundamentals you sometimes take for granted.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Buckingham Palace is the home and office of the Queen of England. It has been the main royal residence since Queen Victoria took the throne in 1837. But in earlier times, the site served other purposes. The 17th century English lawyer Clement Walker described the building occupying that land as a brothel, a hotbed of “debauchery.” Before that, the space was a mulberry garden where silkworms turned mulberry leaves into raw material for silk fabrics. I see the potential for an almost equally dramatic transformation of a certain place in your life, Aquarius. Start dreaming and scheming about the possibilities.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Poet Carolyn Forché is a role model for how to leave one’s comfort zone. In her early career, she earned writing degrees at placid universities near her childhood home in the American Midwest. Her first book mined material about her family; its first poem is addressed to her grandmother. But then she relocated to El Salvador, where she served as a human rights advocate during that country’s civil war. Later she lived and wrote in Lebanon at the height of its political strife. Her drive to expand her range of experience invigorated her poetry and widened her audience. Would you consider drawing inspiration from Forché in the coming weeks and months, Pisces? I don’t necessarily recommend quite so dramatic a departure for you, but even a mild version will be well rewarded.
Homework: Buy or make yourself a present that encourages you to be more generous. Report results at Freewillastrology.com.
Q: I’m a 57-year-old lesbian, and I’m only attracted to much younger women (very early 20s). We’re obviously in very different places in our lives, and these “relationships” don’t last very long. I also get a lot of grief from my friends. I can’t change who I’m attracted to, but I would like a long-term relationship.—Seeking
A: Your previous girlfriend probably remembers prom like it was yesterday—because, for her, it kinda was.
Making matters worse, millennials and post-millennials (generally speaking) are the most overprotected, overparented generations ever—to the point where university administrators probably have stern talks with at least a few parents: “Your son is a freshman in college. You can’t be sneaking into the dining hall to cut his food for him.”
Sure, there are probably some precociously mature 20-somethings out there. However, it usually takes a chunk of life experience—and relationship experience—for a person to grow into who they are and figure out what they want in a partner. So, as a 57-year-old woman, you’re probably as well-paired with the average 22-year-old as you are with the average head of lettuce or desk lamp.
But say—one day while you’re cruising the aisles at Forever 21—you find the 20-something lady Socrates. There’s still a problem, and it’s the way society sneers at a big age gap between partners. The thumbs-downing comes both from a couple’s “own social networks” and from “society at large,” finds social psychologist Justin Lehmiller. However, “perceived marginalization by one’s social network” appears to be most damaging—“significantly” predicting breakups.
Granted, it’s possible that you have some rigid age cutoff in the regions of your brain that do the “hot or not?” calculations. If that’s the case, simply finding a woman who’s young-lookingis a no-go. But ask yourself whether you simply preferthe springier chickens and are actually just afraid of the emotional risks required in being with somebody closer to your age. That’s something you can work to correct. Ultimately, if you want a relationship, the answer to your, “Hey, babe … where have you been all my life?” shouldn’t be, “Um … waiting for my parents to meet so I could do the fun stuff fetuses do, like kickboxing in the womb and giving my mom gestational diabetes.”
Q: I’m a 36-year-old single woman. I’ve noticed that the more I like a guy, the more nervous I get, and the louder, more irreverent and more inappropriate I become. I’m actually a really sweet girl. How can I stop doing this?—Unintentionally Brash
A: Your cocktail party conversation shouldn’t translate to, “I mean, come on … do I really seem like a danger to myself and society?!”
To calm down so you can talk like a person instead of a scary person, it helps to understand—as I explain in my new “science-help” book, Unf*ckology—that “emotions aren’t just thinky things.” They have a basis in the body. The human brain is a marvel, but we can take advantage of how it’s also about as easily tricked as my dog. Take the bodily reaction of fear—pounding heart and all—which also happens to be the bodily reaction of being excited. Research by Harvard Business School’s Alison Wood Brooks finds that you can “reappraise” your fear as excitement—by repeatedly saying aloud to yourself, “I am excited”—and actually shift yourself from a “‘threat’ mind-set” to an “‘opportunity’ mind-set.”
Also, some dude you’re flirting with probably isn’t the last man on the continent. Keeping that in mind, reframe your interaction as a mere opportunity for something to happen with him—and an opportunity to figure out whether it’s a good idea.
You do that not by selling yourself like it’s 4:56pm on Sunday at a yard sale, but by asking him about himself. Counterintuitively, you’ll probably be at your most attractive by leaving a man guessing about you—as opposed to leaping to conclusions, like that you were the little girl who beheaded all the other little girls’ Barbies.
Photo courtesy of the Marin County Sheriff’s Office.
Hero: Dog gone. Right over the precipitous side of a fire road near Baltimore Canyon in Kentfield. Gracie, a 12-year-old pooch, hadn’t been seen in 15 minutes and had stopped responding to calls, prompting Ed Bernstein, her worried person, to dial 911. A village of rescuers arrived on the scene, including Marin County Parks and Open Space rangers, Marin County Sheriff’s deputies, firefighters from Kentfield Fire Protection and a California Highway Patrol (CHP) helicopter. Ranger Michael Warner assessed the area, which included steep drainage with 60 to 70 percent slopes and vertical pitches. A firefighter rappelled down 125 feet through heavy poison oak, but no Gracie. A CHP helicopter also made a futile search, hampered by the thick brush. Although it looked bleak, Ranger Martin Acosta and Deputy Michelle Wagner started up from the bottom of the drainage slope, while Deputy Chris Bondanza and Ranger Warner made their way down, all of them calling to the dog. Finally, they heard a response and discovered poor Gracie pinned in the brush. Frightened, she bit Ranger Warner twice during the rescue, until they were able to soothe her and carry her down the slope to safety. We’re thrilled to report that the senior pup is expected to fully recover from the shock, dehydration and bruising she suffered from the experience. Mission accomplished.
The citizens of California seem to have a talent for pioneering one regrettable socio-political phenomenon after another, years before the country as a whole heedlessly tries the same thing. There are too many examples to catalogue: The embrace of Ronald Reagan, tax cut fever, alarmist immigration phobia and—most salient to today’s headlines—the election of a cartoonish Republican celebrity with...
It is hard not to get cynical about the food/restaurant business when it seems like every other day a large corporation swallows another “little guy” and inevitably the quality of the smaller entity quietly erodes. With chain restaurants or multi-units, this scenario typically plays out with a gradual diminution of food quality.
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North Bay voters may wake up on November 7 to the news that there are two progressives representing the region in Congress—and one of them is a bona fide Berniecrat.
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This week in the Pacific Sun, our cover story, 'Passion Project,' profiles The Indie Alley, a new co-working space in Fairfax. On top of that, we check in with candidates for the Marin County District Attorney position, talk to Alan Turner, who makes Handsome Carver's nut spreads, review the San Francisco Playhouse production 'The Effect' and chat with Peter...
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Before he was a bluegrass legend, singer/songwriter Peter Rowan was a young man playing in a band with the iconic Bill Monroe in the 1960s. One day, Monroe asked Rowan to drive him to Clinch Mountain in Virginia to meet a friend. That experience would stay with Rowan for life.
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ARIES (March 21-April 19): Eighty-three-year-old author Harlan Ellison has had a long and successful career. In the course of publishing hundreds of literary works in seven different genres, he has won numerous awards. But when he was in his 30s, there was an interruption in the upward arc of his career. The film production company Walt Disney Studios hired...
Q: I’m a 57-year-old lesbian, and I’m only attracted to much younger women (very early 20s). We’re obviously in very different places in our lives, and these “relationships” don’t last very long. I also get a lot of grief from my friends. I can’t change who I’m attracted to, but I would like a long-term relationship.—Seeking
A: Your previous girlfriend...
Hero: Dog gone. Right over the precipitous side of a fire road near Baltimore Canyon in Kentfield. Gracie, a 12-year-old pooch, hadn’t been seen in 15 minutes and had stopped responding to calls, prompting Ed Bernstein, her worried person, to dial 911. A village of rescuers arrived on the scene, including Marin County Parks and Open Space rangers, Marin...
