by Stephanie Powell

Along the Miracle Mile in San Anselmo, there is a building glazed in bright white with redwoods etched into a stained-glass window that reaches nearly as high as its structured arches. Don’t let its lofty appearance deceive you. Although it may be one of the oldest businesses still operating in San Anselmo today, it is certainly not a business that draws in eager clients.

Monte’s Chapel of the Hills was established in 1932 on Bank Street. From there, Dominic Frank Monte and his family opened and operated the mortuary—which was in the bottom level of their home for its first five years—until it moved to its current location on Red Hill Avenue in 1937. A graduate of San Rafael High, Monte was one community minded mortician, serving as mayor and city councilman in San Anselmo while fronting his family’s business, where son Charlie and wife Alice pitched in.

The passing of Dominic in 1965 ushered in the next family-bred businessman—when the Montes’ son, 19-year old Charlie, took over. Today Monte’s Chapel of the Hills remains the only independent family-owned and operated mortuary in Marin. In Charlie’s time at the chapel, he arranged funerals for thousands of people—including a service for Grateful Dead lead singer Jerry Garcia, complete with such all-star attendees as Bob Dylan and Ken Kesey.

Charlie and his wife, Dee Dee, ran things until 2009 when they sold the business to longtime employee Edward J. Leon. (Charlie still owns the building and leases the property to Leon.)

The transition of ownership isn’t the only notable change Chapel of the Hills has seen in recent decades. The most prominent changes Leon has experienced during the past two decades are the differences in industry trends and his client’s wishes.

“Oh my God, I mean just cremations, we’re 90 percent in Marin,” says Leon. “We still do a lot of traditional work, but people’s wishes are different. People like party planning now, so we’re more like event coordinators. You have to go with the times and offer what people want.”

The new wave of ceremonies tends to focus on celebrations of life including videos, sea scatterings and party planning—complete with food, balloons and poster boards. Leon also attributes another major change in the business to the mobility of clients. “Marin is very transitional—we’re dealing with a lot of people who are new to Marin,” he says. “We’ve had our base clients who were born and raised here and never left. But now, we’re doing a lot of shipping, we’ll ship people to other states.”

Chapel of the Hills has picked up another new project: The sherriff runs the coroner’s office out of its location. The division is complete with a storage facility that can hold up to 32 people and a designated autopsy room. Leon reported about “80 percent of their case load” remains on site and eventually become clients for Chapel of the Hills.

In June, Richard Ramirez, “The Night Stalker,” was stored on site after the serial-killing San Quentin inmate died from complication from lymphoma at Marin General. The storing brought some unexpected attention to the Chapel.

“It was kind of hush-hush. We had people calling and some weird people showed up at the office here looking for him. Some of his prison pen pals,” said Leon.

With over two decades invested into this Marin homegrown business, Leon is eager to continue growth for Chapel of the Hills. His hopes for the future are to complete some renovations, eventually purchase the land from the Monte family and possibly open up a second location that would specialize as the first pet cremation service in the county.

Leon maintains the family-owned business atmosphere by remaining accessible to the community. But if you see Leon around town, don’t ask him the usual question: “Do the bodies stink?”

Leon will tell you what he tells everybody. “Live people stink too.”

 by Stephanie Powell

Olivia X was shopping at a Mill Valley clothing store to escape the late-June heat when she ran into an acquaintance she hadn’t seen in a long time.

Her old friend gushed over her appearance and was eager to catch up. After commenting on how well “put together” Olivia seemed, her friend—we’ll call her Madam Z—soon steered the conversation in a perplexing direction. In hushed tones Madam Z told Olivia, “There’s this thing I’d like to invite you to; it’s like an elite group of women.”

High off the abundance of streaming compliments, Olivia was flattered and intrigued. She and Madam Z traveled in similar circles—a community of creative, “feather-leather” Burning Man-type folk. She decided to give her friend the benefit of the doubt and meet up a few days later for a chat.

Initially there was no mention of money. The chat focused on sisterhood, abundance and the empowerment of women. But this was no informal “chat.” Olivia and Madam Z were joined on a conference call with a woman in Australia who appeared to hold a venerated position in the “elite group”or “Women’s Wisdom Circle,” as it was called. The woman on the other end of the line was known in Circle as “the Dessert.” After carefully listening and choosing her words wisely, Olivia X thanked the Dessert for her time and her friend for the invitation, and went home to read the documents she was given following the meeting—Women’s Wisdom Circle “guidelines” that outlined Circle in its entirety.

“Don’t invite anyone else [to join the group] right nowyou’ll probably be excited, but just wait,” Olivia was told as she and Madam Z parted ways.

After diving into research on the Internet, phoning friends and re-reading Circle’s guidelines, Olivia’s suspicions grew and eventually she reached out to the Pacific Sun with her concerns that the Circle may not be shaping up as it purports to be—in fact, Olivia wondered if a more descriptive form was that of a pyramid.

Women’s “gifting” circles have surfaced recently throughout Marin and beyond. They consist of women who have “gifted” $5,000 to gain entrance into what members describe as a rewarding world of sisterhood and abundance. There is a hierarchy of members in each circle, with each level named for a serving in a four-course meal. At the top is the Dessert, below her are two Entrees, below them are four Salads and at the bottom are the eight newest members—the Appetizers. It is the Appetizers who are expected to bring $5,000 to the gifting circle dinner party. Once all eight Appetizers pony up, the Dessert receives the $40,000—she has, in theory, worked her way up from being herself an Appetizer, full of patience, and is ready to receive her gift.

Once a circle is complete, meaning the Dessert has received her gift, the group splits and the two Entrees elevate to become the Dessert of their respective groupsand to await the bounty of eight new Appetizers.

The term “circle” shies away from the striking visual associated with pyramid schemes, but whether its shape is similar or not, critics of gifting circles say they share more in common with pyramids than simply meets the eye.

****

Gifting circles like the one Olivia encountered are shrouded in secrecy and target a very Marin-type demographic—the young New Age community. Circle “meetings” are often conducted with a 21st century slant: All gatherings are held via a weekly conference call. While a majority of initial “invitations” occur through personal meetings, other members of the circle may be located across continents—and conference calls allow for much-desired anonymity within the groups. While such concepts as “sisterhood” are promoted to new members, the weekly conference calls can be more businesslike—focusing on members’ progress in finding new members. Conference calls may also focus on how the circle is “moving forward” and when the dessert will receive her gifts of abundance—all 40,000 of them. Sometimes a tarot card is drawn and the woman who draws the card will discuss her feelings around it and how it relates to other members.

The first rule of Circle is: you do not talk about Circle. The second rule of Circle is: you DO NOT talk about Circle. Many variations of Circle guidelines exist. One particular set of guidelines—which was forwarded last month to the Pacific Sun—stresses that prospective members honor its privacy: “We ask that they not talk about the circles to anyone, until they have come into the circle and received training about how to invite people to the circle. This is because there is a general misunderstanding about the legality of the circles, and we want to avoid people’s judgments and projections. It is also because there are certain words we can use in talking about the circles that keep them legal, and most people without training will use words that might make the circles illegal.”

The exclusivity of a circle fuels its foundation and its female-only structure attracts eager women hungry for spiritual growth, abundance, sisterhood and, well, money. Circle’s shaky legality is handled by calling it a “gifting circle,” where each member “gifts” $5,000 to the top dog in order to enter and participate.

But any situation in which large sums of money are being funneled up an increasingly narrow social hierarchy is going to have to deal with questions of legality.

Defenders of Circle’s pyramid of prosperity say there’s nothing shady about it. They say the sisterhood the women gain through the process is priceless and considered the real reward; the $40,000 at the end—if you make it to Dessert—is just an added “gift.”

But Circle can be a tight-knit community. More than ready to protect the money they’ve already invested, very few Salads, Entrees and Desserts have come forward to discuss the secrecy around Circle.

****

What Olivia X found most disturbing is that Circle comes couched in New Age terminology.

“I had a woman tell me that the reason I didn’t want to be involved [in Circle] is because I wasn’t ready to receive that much abundance in my life and that I had issues and I had trust issues,” says Olivia. “It’s just sucking in a lot of people who are more naive than I am for one reason or another.” Olivia says she came forward to warn women—especially Marin women—who may be particularly susceptible to Circle’s promises of money, friendship and New Age fulfillment.

According to the Women’s Wisdom Circle guidelines that Olivia was given, the gifting process is legal due to a gifting statement each “participant” must fill out and sign in order to join. The gifting statement clarifies intentions and protects the Dessert from the possibility of a quick change of heart “I waive any and all rights to civil or criminal remedies against the recipient of my gift,” the statement declares. In addition to the required gifting statement, other subjects outlined in Circle’s documentation include: privacy guidelines, who to invite, who not to invite, responding to standard questions (i.e.: legality) and “magic words.”

Some of the specific “words” that the guidelines say put Circle on shaky legal ground when members use them include: investment, payment, recruit, signup, profits, dividends, return, assured, guarantee and payout.

The guidelines instead encourage more proactive-sounding words such as: receive, financial empowerment, participation, opportunity, support and sponsor.

Also, Appetizers must never send their “gift” through the U.S. mail.

The guidelines provide Appetizers with recommendations for fundraising the initial $5,000 gift: Have a garage sale and part with heirlooms, sell your car (“remember, in a relatively short period of time it can be replaced by a new one!”), ask your parents for an advance on your inheritance, apply for a credit card, find an “angel” to gift you the money, ask five friends to lend you $1,000, get a second job, paint your neighbor’s house, tutor your neighbors’ kids and lastly—meditate and pray.

Oh, and if you run into any troubles along the way—Circle sisters don’t want to hear about it. “During this living workshop we will all experience our blocks, issues, fears, patterns, etc.,” say the guidelines. “When you discover that you have a fear or issue, it is your responsibility to work on that outside of the circle. You can share about your process, as long as it is in a positive light.”

Alexis Neely is a Colorado lawyer who counts herself among the New Age community and is very familiar with gifting circles, though she herself is not a member. She expresses skepticism about the outlining diction of this particular Marin circle’s guidelines.

“That does not sound right,” Neely says about the guidelines Olivia was given. “My understanding is that you work on it in the Circle with the women. The women I have talked to who have benefited from it have worked through some clear issues. I can see shifts in them. These are women who had massive abundance issues, massive scarcity issues. And its not because they’d received any money, they had not yet received any money. But they had tapped into and opened a portal, which I talk about [in my blog] happening when you make the gift, but beyond that they had received the emotional support necessary.”

Circle frames women as being part of a western culture that leaves them disenfranchised. “Giving, supporting and nurturing are all qualities expressed through feminine nature,” say the guidelines. “In the history of our culture, women often find themselves giving far more than they receive in every day life.”

****

The “gifting” structure’s odds of sustainability are slim. The math boils down to this: Eighty-eight percent of women who participate by gifting the $5,000 will never receive anything as a Dessert. The odds look even more dismal when one considers that the difficulties of finding eight new women grows exponentially with each new circle. After the 10th generation, the model’s number of supposed “participants” soars past Earth’s population.

A well-known member in the Bay Area New Age community, who desires to remain anonymous and who we’ll call “Orion,” describes Circle as a “social virus” and says its sustainability is already at a tipping point.

“Soon enough it’s going to collapse, it’s already collapsing,” says Orion. “Were already reaching a critical mass of the community. People are being asked [to join] three to four times a week. As a result, these circles are going to stagnate or infect other communities. But what’s going to happen next? There are groups of people who’ve started to think about that and how to help the community heal from this drain and epidemic and the social impact it’s had.”

Orion elaborates on what he sees as Circle’s target audience: “These Circles target neo-pagan tribal-hippies. The spiritual revival, the burner culture. What I’ve heard, they are generally much younger.”

He seems to recall a similar “epidemic” going around Marin about eight years ago.

“There is a resurgence every eight to 10 years because every eight to 10 years there is a whole new crop of women with more disposable income and they are going to these [Burning Man style] festivals.”

He says the circles attract women who are transient.

“They are very gypsy-like; they don’t stay [in one place], they can make a fair amount of money by trimming [marijuana] in the fall and doing odd jobs and they don’t spend a lot. They are staying at this place or that place. All they need to do is eat, essentially.”

Orion says the largest “gift” he’s heard of someone walking away with is $80,000. But the Circle doesn’t end with the gift, Orion explains, hierarchies within the Circle and community are apparent. “There are definitely cliques, absolutely. When people tell stories [about Circle] that’s one of the main recurring themes.”

He describes New Age gatherings where the attendees congregate on different sides of the room-based on who’s in a Circle and who isn’t. He says his criticism doesn’t stem from a personal vendetta, but from concerns about the New Age community as a whole.

“Mainly my stake in [gifting circles] is wanting the [New Age] community to survive and what I’m seeing is that the very structure of the Circle—well, they’re not really like circles they are more like pyramids—the very structure of these pyramids is causing a great deal of harm, mostly it’s a social impact. It’s the kind of impact you don’t really see when you’re in the Circle. In the Circle you see that you’re with all these wonderful women and you’re creating abundance with each other, but no one is asking the question: At what cost?”

The fate of women’s gifting circles in Marin remains uncertain. In the meantime, how does it continue? Orion explains:

“The women who speak highly of the Circle—slash pyramid—they find that they get really good coaching, a lot about money. As soon as she has any kind of issue around losing her gift, she’s right to be coached about it. It provides for a perfect reason to give money and not want it back—and if anyone wants it back, she is coached around her attachment toward money.”

Orion describes it as the perfect plan—or, rather, “the perfect scam.”

“Here give $5,000, it’s a gift and if you start complaining that you won’t get the $5,000 back then you obviously need to grow a little bit so you’re no longer attached to this money,” he says, about the circular logic of the groups.

Facebook debates about gifting circles have been anything but placid. Olivia X recalls a conversation streaming on Orion’s wall for weeks in which a man who wanted to alert the authorities about gifting circles was bombarded by circle defenders with all sorts of threats—including going to the police and falsely accusing him of child abuse.

“That is so heartbreaking, I started crying when I saw that,” says Olivia. “That’s when I decided to be anonymous. And, that’s when I decided to go to a newspaper, this is ridiculous—this is out of control.”

****

Margo Rohrbacher, public information officer for the San Rafael Police Department, says she hasn’t heard any reports of women’s gifting circles going on in Marin and said she couldn’t comment on where one might stand legally without specifics to a case. Last week a U.S. district judge had another kind of “gift” for two women from Guilford, Conn., who were convicted for leading their own Appetizer-through-Dessert “gifting table.” Donna Bello, 57, was sentenced to six years in prison and her accomplice, Jill Platt, 65, to four years on felonies of wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to defraud the IRS and filing false tax returns.

The questions around gifting circles’ legality, however, are almost secondary among criticisms levied within New Age groups, where the concern has more to do with the effect the circles are having on the community itself.

One former Entrée to speak out about her experience in a circle is blogger Lindsey Vona, who wrote:

“This article is in no way meant to create separation or cause harm to any groups or individuals. I am not in any way against acts of true giving or circles of sisterhood. The purpose of this post is to provide education to the public on the currently unsustainable structure of this particular ‘Gifting Culture,’ so that people can feel supported in making informed decisions.

“Because much of the language around this is either shrouded in secrecy or New Age thought, this post may come off as one-sided; however it is intended to cut through the conditioning and get right to the heart of what is happening.” (Vona declined an interview with the Sun, but you can read more of Vona’s firsthand experience at www.realitysandwich.com/womens_circle_pyramid.)

According to the Marin Women’s Circle guidelines, Circle first saw the light of day nearly three decades ago, launched by a small group of women in Canada in the early 1980s. As for Circle hitting Marin’s scene, it appears it made its debut about a year to a year and half ago. In addition to Marin, gifting circles have been reported in Colorado, Arizona, Santa Cruz and other parts of northern California.

Alexis Neely is no stranger to Circle etiquette. Despite her roots in law, Neely is a vibrant part of the Colorado New Age community and has herself been invited multiple times to join Circle. Many have sought her help and advice due to her legal background and she decided to offer her viewpoints though a blog post. Neely says her goal is to provide an outline of information that allows women to make an informed choice if Circle is right for them.

After interviewing members of Circle for her blog post she noted, “What I’m experiencing when I speak to them is that there is a real opportunity for them to find a gift in the decision they make. And to shift from the victim perspective to a place of real empowered choice. And when they do, whether or not they receive back their investment—it’s worth it.

“Some of the circles are pure money plays and they’re Ponzi schemes and they’re pyramids—they’re nothing more than what people say about them.”

After seeing both sides of Circle’s outcome, however, Neely offers her blog as a place for women to consult “a balanced view and to help women identify if it is right for them.” Despite multiple invitations Alexis has declined all invitations into Circle as she does not feel it’s the right fit for her.

With the concept of abundance at its core, Neely defined her take on it: “I don’t know what abundance means to everybody, but to me it means knowing without a shadow of a doubt that there is enough for everyone. There is no lack or limitation. The underlying feeling that there is enough.”

Whether the New Age community has seen enough Circle, however, isn’t yet abundantly clear.

by Stephanie Powell

The countdown always started at 7pm. That was when I had an hour until closing and then T-minus 30 minutes until I locked the doors and went on my way home. The holidays had just ended and the last rays of daylight were fading, leaving my co-worker and me in a darkened ghost town of retail space at the Village for the next 90 minutes.

We spent the remaining time dividing up the tables and eliminating any outliers—making sure to fluff and touch each stack jeans and tops. We saw maybe four people pass by our doors in those 40 minutes, all of whom were mall employees, cherishing each step toward their cars—and freedom. We were in the home stretch, so I decided to shut down one of our registers.

It’s 7:50pm. Who needs pants at 7:50pm? A woman wanders in and my sales associate quickly greets her, but continues folding the zone I assigned her. As I’m counting the nickels in my register my mind starts to stray: Is she seriously getting that sweater from the bottom of that pile? Is she going for a denim wall? Crap. I leave my count behind and make a beeline toward the customer. She now has two styles of jeans in her hand in two different sizes—clearly a newb. I ask to start her a fitting room and she obliges kindly and smiles.

At this point in the evening, I start to become a human again. I can feel the comfort of the leather seat of my car, the warmth of my brand new sherpa-lined blanket and the fruity varietal taste of my cabernet sauvignon eagerly awaiting the arrival of my droughty palate. It’s five till eight and the only way you can convince me to care that you need pants is by running into my store pantless whilst screaming. I combat my selfish compulsion to focus on my wind-down and keep a strong game face.

She’s been in there a while. I’ve already locked the door and hit the music. I see my sales associate check in on her and remove some styles of jeans from her room. I approach her fitting room in hopes to politely usher her out and get what we both need from this experience—her: pants; me: a ticket home. “How are you doing in there? Do you need any other sizes? Is there anything I can clear out of there for you?”

She opens the curtain with an unassuming grin. “I’m doing all right. I don’t think any of the styles worked for me,” she says.

Catch me on my A game and I’m a denim god. I can fit any person, any time—and I will find you pants that you dream about all night and can’t wait to wake up and put on in the morning. Catch me five minutes after closing: “Aw that’s too bad. Did you want help finding a certain style?”

“No, no,” she reassures me.

Thank God, I think.

“It’s just one of those days. What’s your name by the way?” she asks.

The blood rushes to my head and I know what’s happening. All I can think is: Crap. I already took off my name tag. My mind starts going down the list: Did we greet her? Yes. Did we ask her name? No. Did we use open-ended questions? No. Did we give our names? Nope. Did we offer her multiple leg openings? Not a chance. Did we bring at least three items, including accessories to the fitting room? No way.

It’s now or never and I’ve got to salvage what I can.

“My name’s Stephanie, what’s your name?” I ask.

Her name was etched into my mind for the next 30 days, but then was effectively forgotten: She was a secret shopper. We’ll call her Sally.

“My name is Sally,” she says.

I smile and carefully examine her fitting room while she’s speaking. I switch gears, “OH MY GOSH! You tried on the new skinnies and didn’t love them?? How is that even possible, you’ve got to see them with this brand new wedge we just got in—it will change you life.”

Before she can speak, I strut over to the shoe display and demand her size. I send my associate to grab her size and give her the look. She’s confused and wants to go home, but not me, we’ve got T-minus 30 minutes to save our asses.

Sally and I banter back and forth about how to wear different types of denim while I hand her all of my favorite belts from our belt bar. We discuss where she wants to wear her new pair of jeans, her body type, struggles she’s faced in the past when finding a pair of pants and where she works—her day-to-day job.

From what I can tell, Sally is eating it up. While I ushered her back into the fitting room, I whisper Sally’s true identity to my sales associate. We double-team her, shower her in jewels and compliments. We show her five different ways to wear a scarf. Our two favorite tops. She even tries to recruit us as sellers for her employer. By the end of our last-minute uphill battle, Sally is covered in jewelry, holding belts and donning our latest heels. She thanks us for our help and commends us on how helpful we are at styling and on our extensive breadth of product knowledge.

Although Sally decided not to make a purchase (duh, she’s a secret shopper) I felt great about the turn-around and happily went home to my well-deserved glass of wine and fuzzy sherpa blanket.

•••••

It didn’t even take 24 hours before I heard about Sally. I opened the next morning at 9am. Just as I turned off the alarm and set my keys down on the desk, the telephone rings. It’s my district manager.

“Hi Steph, how was last night?” she coyly asks.

I tell her all about our perfect close, that we made our store goal for the day and the sweet tale of Sally, a “customer” who we gave some confidence to after helping her find a fit she was planning on coming back to purchase. I even joke about how she tried to recruit us.

My district manager’s voice doesn’t change, “Yes, I heard.” Pause. In fact, it’s the longest pause in history. “We sent Sally in, she was a secret shopper. You guys got secret shopped last night.”

Um, duh I’m aware—I wasn’t born yesterday. I’d been working at this establishment for over half a decade, but the eerie disdain in her voice left me starting to feel queasy and I started to regret only drinking coffee for breakfast. My nerves started to race as she went on to explain that although Sally raved about us, my associate and I failed to hit the marks at the correct times on the checklist.

Here it comes.

Sally was the worst kind of secret shopper. She wasn’t sent in by a third party and she certainly wasn’t a stranger. Sally was a covert confidant of my boss’ boss’ boss. She had been interviewing with the company and was considering taking a position with corporate. She came into our store to observe our service and familiarize with our product firsthand.

Everyone in the break room heard about Sally—incidents like this led to a new companywide policy: Shortly after World War Sally, the company began regularly utilizing secret shoppers.

I certainly wasn’t the first person to fail a secret shop and I won’t be the last. Sally left smiling (though she never took the job) and I stayed—with my shot at that year’s 10-cent pay raise surely trampled and gone.

Share your secrets with Stephanie at sp*****@pa********.com.

by Anonymous

I live in the ugliest house on Dogdin Drive. And second-to-smallest. You’ve definitely seen me. I’m the one who hung a note in your apple tree asking permission to pick.

I look…different. The shaggy clothes, the sun-blasted skin, the fact that I’m not in a rush. There’s something not quite right. I might be in your way.

This is an account of how an unusually creative “cheap-lance” writer survives—nay, thrives—in a county better known for its extravagant displays of wealth.

So much is made of our millionaires—the 20 percent whose domiciles are tour destinations, whose cars turn heads and whose clothing speaks volumes. Even their slow food plays hard-to-get. Celebrated, denigrated and imitated, yes. But are millionaires typical?

Far from it.

Only a fraction of us could opt for this top-shelf way of living and yet, on the whole, we are practically dictated to follow suit.

In the interest of showing how the bottom 1 percent of the non-indigent Marin residents live, I propose a little tour of a parallel universe. That inhabited by the “thousandaires” who perhaps moved here a decade earlier, didn’t take out second mortgages, saw the kids fledge (or forgot to have them in the first place) and realized that life could be much simpler with a slight shift in priorities.

You see, my husband and I forage for much of our food, and we get around by bicycle. We—this lower crust, as it were—have added depth of flavor, diversity and renown to Marin since the days Thaddeus Welch lived in a shed at Steep Ravine. That we continue to adhere, where so many are flung off, recommends our lifestyle as no amount of cash can.

Adulthood has a few surprises

Because of the geography, climate and demographics, I can get most of my necessities for free—as long as I can wait. In order to wait, you need to have time. And everyone knows: Time equals money. (Well, not really. If that were true, you could opt for more time instead of a raise at work. And last time I checked, they aren’t handing out Fridays off as a job enticement.)

My journey toward the gleaning lifestyle began decades ago, when one day in high school our health-ed teacher drew a big circle on the chalkboard under the words Financial Picture. He slashed a couple more lines in it, making a pie chart of three roughly equal parts. The fact that I carry this simple graph around 40 years later means he reached me.

“If you think school is a bore,” he said, “adulthood has a few surprises in store for you. Like how hard it is just to keep your head above water, financially.”

That was funny. Our classroom didn’t have any kids who worried about financial survival.

“Here’s how much time you’ll spend earning the money for a car,” he said as he shaded in one third of the pie.

“That’s including gas and maintenance…here’s how much time goes into buying a house.”

He colored another segment.

“This last bit? Recreation.”

It was a pretty scrawny triangle. I raised my hand.

“What about sleep? A third of our life?”

“Well…”

“When do you relax? What if I rode a bike, and rented…?”

So here we are now, half a lifetime later, with me pigged out on the biggest recreation slice I could possibly eat.

In perfect health. With time to spare. No money, either.

Maybe “time” is the explanation then for why I feel like Leona Helmsley’s sweet-tempered twin—the richest lady in Marin. Not that I want to compete. Half my friends are vying for the same title.

But I’ll settle for the Queen of Glean.

The Queen of Glean

My 25-year stint in the wide-open spaces of the country’s richest county can be viewed as a work in progress. I’ve had lots of practice learning the secret routes between the towns, the good places to get the fruit and precisely how hard I have to work to break even at the end of every fiscal year.

Sometimes I even get the cool jobs that others would pay to do: lookout on Mt. Tam; bicycle coach; artist’s model; restaurant critic.

My mom called me an “income poop” because I wouldn’t crawl above the poverty line, whatever that is. Who’s drawing the line?

The fact is, I measure everything differently; I treasure time instead of money. Madison Avenue’s materials economy is a vile joke, especially if you’re fundamentally happy. Basically, if they say it’s good, run for the hills. Really good things don’t need to advertise.

It’s nothing new to say that if you value what others cast off, you might find yourself busy indeed—busy collecting and rehabbing what you feel shouldn’t have been cast off. Maybe I’m just a step or two away from working at the Salvation Army, which has done so much good for so many people, but I’m not in the least bit disabled.

My friends and I keep an eye out for each other’s wants. Perhaps this hunter-gatherer mentality is innate, and maybe shopping satisfies it for other people. The sheer randomness of “the find” guarantees a tingle of surprise and delight (warning sign of possible serotonin flush, addiction alert!) as I jam “the find” into my waistband and push off, calculating where I’m going to put it when I arrive home to Squalid Manor.

Foraging can get out of hand. Look around your neighborhood. Every block has at least one pack rat, doesn’t it? Bringing property values down?

Like the gleaners of old, I feel no shame picking up what is lying on the ground. (Repeat to self: I am rescuing these towels…boxes…bottles…)

I maintain a pocket map of the apple, fig and lemon-laden trees, grapevines, feijoa gardens, walnut trees in my neighborhood—plus their seasons, and the disposition of the homeowner.

Look over your neighbor’s fence. Check out the surrounding trees. Every June through August the residential roadways are paved with plum jam, every winter with crushed olive residue. Walnuts look like exploded brains (with little brittle helmets) evenly squished over the asphalt. Fig trees are considered a big mess by a few and often taken out despite their beauty and age.

In general, a note hung on the fence of the yard with a ripened tree works magic. Permission has almost always been extended, a vast improvement over the stop-and-rob technique of my 20s. Maybe age does have its privileges.

I’ve been called St. Packrat. Also, the Global Village Idiot. I never pass a Dumpster without looking in. If things look good I come back with a trailer. My clothes are incredible (Marin women have lovely taste) and my shoes are the best. I am known for my sartorial style. My very favorite find is the Queen of Glean’s throne—a hand-built Adirondack chair from the 1950s made so well it didn’t bust apart when pitched into a massive industrial Dumpster near my place. It remains the single most amazing thing I’ve ever found in a big yellow box. It is painted a mucilaginous green, and almost disappears into the garden.

I have a finely tuned animal sense of when people are going to move away. Realtors’ signs help, too. The panic and the tumult and probably the great cost of moving things makes people have to jettison pure treasure. Just a couple of months ago an entire kitchen’s contents fell my way. Someone threw away a metal tin (unopened) of Scharffen Berger cocoa (cost: $10), plus several pounds of organic apples in their supermarket sack; ditto oranges, a sack of rice, many herbs and spices (which I compost). Little French pepper grinder. Sugar (and the bowl it was in). Numerous kitchen implements. Artichokes. We still enjoy that pepper grinder; everything else was gobbled up.

I wonder (not often) if I’m breaking laws when I raid the Hefty bags poised on the driveway when the house is sold. Then I turn the page.

The Salivation Army

Restaurant chefs build layers of flavor using slow-simmered stocks. Following each “find,” I began diverting some of the good stuff before it went to the compost bucket. (We pour a 3-gallon bucket per day of unused gleaned fruit peels and vegetable matter into my compost. Keeps the worms happy as hell, but those calories!)

Thanks to gleaning, I learned more about vegetarian cuisine—since the only meat we got was from the carcasses friends would save for me. I know that sounds atrocious, but remember, to me, hurling nutrients is a crime. Yet even after trying to eat all I gather, there is still just too much! And I wondered: What if we had a club where members alternated preparing a locally gleaned meal for four to six people who live within five miles of one another?

I know a few real chefs, as well as other foodies, who made perfect conscripts to the club. When I brought up the possibility of getting together these meals on a regular basis, it became clear that any structure would kill the club before it was born. So this “Salivation Army” of six chefs has remained in Urban Myth form: a loose-knit rumor of cooks who can whip up (so much for the slow-food idea) an entire meal—not potluck—for familiar (and understanding) people for under $10. Total. Ten clams cash outlay for six people, just over a buck apiece. OK, not including wine or beer. To screen out snobs, Dumpster diving is encouraged.

This presumes a pretty well-stocked pantry (which is expected to be raided, thus depleting it—a good thing to do). We’d considered making it potluck, but to have a meal prepared three, four or five times a year without having to lift a finger—for the price of doing it once a year yourself—seemed superior to schlepping to a potluck every other month. I enlisted my friend Carol, an accomplished home cook who, like me, pores over the French Laundry Cookbook for fun, looking for ideas more than recipes; I conscripted Ed Brown, the star of the recent documentary, How To Cook Your Life.

One particular evening it was my turn. Carol and her husband Bob brought a bottle of sauvignon blanc and I’d prepared these simple dishes (all ingredients from the “back-door catering company”):

Vegan Rainy Day risotto (“has a few leeks”)

Roasted carrot soup

Sautéed garden chard with garlic

Butter lettuce salad

Apple crisp with walnut cinnamon topping

I routinely draft a menu, no matter how few courses. Maybe it’s just me, but reading a menu does something chemical (think Pavlov). Plus, it’s impressive as hell…and besides, having it written down not only documents where my culinary curiosity took me that day, but also helps remind me to take the casserole out of the warm oven and serve the damn thing. There have been Salivation Army feeds where the choices were so many that a dish got overlooked, in spite of having it on the menu. (With no waiter to vent at, there is little likelihood one of the diners will complain about the missing tiramisu. On second thought—who forgets they’re due a dessert?)

Dress for success

Clothes come from boxes set out on the street periodically. Not the ones labeled “donation”…the ones labeled “free.” There is a difference! In some instances, sad, flat clothes are pulled off the roadside, washed, rehabbed and either donated to the Salvation Army or put to my own nefarious use. (How many saggy sweaters have I felted to add a few stiff wool flowers to a boring jacket?)

Twice every year, the women in the Bay Area old-time music community gather to swap their clothes. These women represent the pinnacle of DIY spirit, and for an entire Saturday someone’s house is turned into a giant Salon des Refuses (rejected finery—looks better on you, dear). It is an unusual spectacle (sorry, no gents) to see a dozen women ripping off layers and piling them back on, impatient for mirror time, and enthusiastically swapping opinions about that particularly wonderful old skirt that used to be Lynne’s. (Everyone has something that used to be Lynne’s; her taste is impeccable and she seems to find more great stuff and churn her rejects back to the rest of us—where they are snapped up the way luxury branded stuff is at a duty-free shop.)

Housing. Whenever possible, barter.

Until I met my mate I traded work for my rent; my first job in the county was as a nanny, with outside housecleaning gigs (being young and flexible and disposed to simple domestic labor). In 1980, such work required no résumé.

I lived with a single mother who had a 7-year-old boy; I took charge of his morning routine and after-school care. Midday I reported for housecleaning duty at an impeccable Sausalito home.

“It’s a wreck!” my boss would say. “I haven’t had time to clean up for you…” Wow, I guess it’s true that people clean up for the housecleaner! This was the kind of home where you take off your shoes (a reasonable inconvenience in the service of the goddess Hygieia). Everything looked spotless. My job was simple: murder the microbes. And so I’d grab the basket of cleaning supplies and scrub the impeccable rooms.

(In the “only in Marin” column: Every wastebasket was packed with snipped-off price tags, plastic wrap, shopping sacks and boxes and at the bottom, all those little T-shaped thingies.) I finally had to give up the charade of cleaning Mrs. De Point’s tidy home. My handiwork was no match for her X-ray vision.

Within half a year, I’d met my future husband, relocated and nailed a job teaching at a women’s gym. I was ensconced, and my third decade beckoned…

And so here we are now in Squalid Manor (or is the Taj Mahovel?) Buying early isn’t a tactic, it’s an accident of fate—because it probably means you were born earlier. Marin County has a markedly mature population. Many early birds never saw a reason to leave the county. As the decades went by, and the mortgage got paid off, it became evident that selling and leaving with a wad of cash would mean no possibility of return. The hole closes quickly after you—assuming you’re in the Wealth of Experience Club. You can’t return to buy another home because the prices will have escalated. So sticking around is a brilliant tactic, and you get to “own” all public land as far as the eye can see. Our particular patch of heaven resembles a shoebox, with asbestos siding and all the windows insulated with bubble wrap—guaranteed to get a stare or two. Fortunately, there is no restriction on the number of clotheslines we can string up in the yard, or what color the house is. (I’m leaning toward polka dot, about a foot across, in tribute to Zippy.) We have four rooms arranged in a square, and a tiny bathroom. Most of our living takes place in a couple of “zones” sprinkled around, since the house is so unremarkable (read: cold) and small. All around—in the garden mostly—are the bits of metal and wood as befits a pack-rat engineer.

More than a lifestyle choice

Marin’s original inhabitants, the Coastal Miwoks, enjoyed such natural bounty and easygoing climate that they were unprepared to defend their millennia-old and highly sustainable way of life from marauding missionaries, soldiers and settlers. This has set the motif for waves of newcomers who succumb to the next wave and the next. I am constantly seeking out the stories of the earlier residents…they leave so quietly, and take a quieter county with them when they go. Someone has to hang onto the recipe for Marin’s inherent mellowness.

Many neighborhoods still have traces of the plantings left by descendants of European settlers who re-created West Coast versions of their gardens back in Italy, Switzerland and Portugal—where every plant pulled its own weight by feeding the family. Whenever I see a row of olive trees (like on Manuel T. Freitas Parkway or in Ross), a plethora of persimmons in fabulous winter glory or a gnarled fig tree at every house in pockets of Fairfax and San Anselmo, I am thankful. Then I chase my gratitude down with a sincere unspoken apology—200 years late—to the Miwok who practiced sustainability in a way we can only dream of. Then I pull out my apple-grabbing pole and go to work. Before the term freegan was ever coined, Marin’s cornucopia was sustaining my husband and me at Squalid Manor.

Americans throw out 99 percent of what they buy within 12 months of purchase. Check out “The Story of Stuff” at www.storyofstuff.com for a clue about why those $5 radios cost so little—not enough to pay for the rent on the shelf they sit on. Remember the bumper sticker that read “If you’re not mad, you’re not paying attention”? The news that most of us are pitching our goods away at that rate is enough to inspire some action.

On top of the manufactured stuff we heave, half our food supply gets trucked to the landfill. For a girl who was raised in the Clean Your Plate Club, this really hurts. Seeing the yellow trucks en route to the dump, knowing they’re full of food while the assorted food charities hope to get donations of cash and cans. Neither of which nourishes a body.

For over three years, I’ve barely spent a cent on food—except for Dr. Bob’s medicinal quality chocolate ice cream (you can only get it in the finest markets, 8 bucks a pint). There is that 50-pound sack of jasmine rice that lasts us three months, so don’t be surprised if you see St. Packrat carefully balancing her quarterly load of grain between San Rafael and heaven to the west.

Excerpt from

“I Could Give All to Time”

by Robert Frost

I could give all to Time except—

except

What I myself have held.

But why declare

The things forbidden that while the Customs slept

I have crossed to Safety with?

For I am There,

And what I would not part with I have kept.