Paula West gives America tough love

Paula West’s “Great American Politic” show was sold out on Friday, April 20, the auditorium brimming with fans of West’s voice and West’s politics. The program was an exact reflection of her views, the first half largely bleak (including “Over There” and “Mississippi Goddam”) and the second half more hopeful (including “If I Had a Hammer,” “The House I Live In”).

It was unusual, I thought, to be listening to a performer who wasn’t singing about romance — the subject, I’d say, of most songs. These songs of protest and action were more than well-received by an audience that included a preponderance of gray-haired fans. Perhaps many had come of age in the era reflected in the second half of the program and by now are beyond the stage of looking for romantic love. But that’s not the only kind of love.

Love of country is the point of even the darkest of protest songs, the loudest of protests voiced by those who care enough to crave change. “They used to tell me I was building a dream, with peace and glory ahead,” says “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” That’s the romance upon which America was built.

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At Doe Library of UC Berkeley one night last week, a screening of “Elephant’s Dream,” a documentary about life in Kinshasa in the Republic of Congo, was well under way when the fire alarm went off, and a recorded announcement told people to evacuate. People rushed outside, police and fire trucks showed up, and after 15 minutes or so, the crowd was allowed to enter. Wise-guy Gar Smith told filmmaker Kristof Bilsen that he could tell friends he’d received a warm reception in Berkeley. When the movie resumed, it included a scene of a fire at the Kinshasa fire station, where crews try to put out the fire, says Smith, “with hoses that didn’t have enough water pressure to do the job.”

In related matters, Lee Houskeeper, one of the organizers of the yearly April 18 earthquake commemoration ceremonies at Lotta’s Fountain, says the water was flowing through the fountain last Wednesday when Mayor Mark Farrell remarked that he was thirsty. So he and Houskeeper cupped their hands and sipped.

Yuck. Turns out the fountain is not hooked up to the city’s main water pipes, but is fed from its own tank, heavily laced with chlorine to keep it algae-free.

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⏩ The death of Len Stefanelli, who while rising through the ranks to the presidency of Sunset Scavenger claimed to have “brought garbage out of the dark ages,” was marked with a crowded funeral at St. Stephen’s Church and reception at the Olympic Club. Stefanelli was a member of the 70-year-old Calamari Club, which meets in the back room of Scoma’s every week. The fellowship of club members is so tight, reports Noah Griffin, that Richard Carpeneti, another member, interrupted a vacation in Italy by flying to and from San Francisco for the funeral.

⏩ Street sign spotted by Adda Dada near Yerba Buena Center for the Arts: “Teens will change the world.”

⏩ To quote the wisdom of reader Eileen Denny: “All women over 40 will NOT wear those blouses with the shoulders cut out. OK? Please?” And as long as I’m passing on fashion pronouncements, same disdain goes for those form-fitting exercise leggings with mesh inserts.

⏩ Pulitzer note: James Forman Jr., whose “Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America,” won the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction this year, is the grandson of muckraking journalist Jessica Mitford, who lived in Oakland. Forman’s mother is Mitford’s daughter; his father was civil rights leader and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee activist James Forman.

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Reading last week’s reports that American consumers discard nearly a pound of food each day spurred Steven Tracy’s observation that nearly all of it is healthy food, “old broccoli, bok choy and lettuce that has turned into pre-petroleum sludge.” Tracy would be surprised if the wasted food included Cheetos, beer or ice cream, which he says proves just how careful Americans are about their diets.

But waste not, want not, there may be benefits to the results of eating junk food. Having read with horror about last week’s Southwest Airlines plane fatality, Mark Aronoff says he has realized there are benefits in having an extralarge person in the airplane seat next to yours.

PUBLIC EAVESDROPPING

“We didn’t come here to shop, we came here to eat.” Woman to man, overheard in Costco in Antioch by Rick Wolfe