Take the plunge on doing a good deed
With two days to go, you ought to know that Sunday has been proclaimed Good Deeds Day, during which citizens of 50 countries around the world will put “into practice the simple idea that every single person can do something good, be it large or small, to improve the lives of others and positively change the world.” In keeping with this, perhaps you can refrain from asking the waiter for the ingredients in the stock.
P.S.: As to other good deeds, Batkid Miles Scott was supposed to appear in the Oscar ceremonies with Andrew Garfield. The actor’s reps say that he was told the segment was being cut because it didn’t fit in; the New York Post said Garfield didn’t like the script, so pulled out; the academy cited “production issues.”
Stephen Vincent, egalitarian, artist and wordsmith, suggests banishing the phrase “high tech,” particularly when applied to its workers. Nobody’s ever called a “low tech worker,” he notes.
“We don’t call anybody else except certain priests ‘high.’ No ‘high journalists,’ ‘high artists,’ ‘high poets’ or anything. It might level the playing field for all of us citizens to be freed of this … seemingly aristocratic level assignation.”
P.S.: After walking the labyrinth at Grace Cathedral in search of serenity,
Dennis Knebel noticed another woman doing the same. But she was chatting on a cell phone.
P.P.S.: Added to the list of Google Glass etiquette tips: “Don’t be a glasswipe,” suggests Elizabeth Manning.
P.P.P.S.: On the 24-Divisadero bus, Stewart Ingram overheard one middleaged man advise another, “No, I don’t think you can save money by paying your bail in bitcoin.” (And while the subject is bitcoins: It’s been a lot of fascinating fun to watch the unfolding of the story of those found gold pieces. In 100 years, when bitcoins or something like that are in use, will it be possible to relish the unearthing of buried loot?)
Following weather reports last weekend, Sonoma Sourpuss heard a TV meteorologist describing efforts to repair a sinkhole in Santa Cruz. “They’ve been trying to fill it up with riffraff,” she said, leaving the Sourpuss with images of street people being stuffed into some kind of permanent (and damp) sit-lie situation. (She knows that riprap is the real stuff.)
Discriminating Niles Dolbeare says there is a difference in Whole Foods cuisine from San Francisco outpost to outpost. “The best hot bar,” he says, meaning a place to pick up hot food, not hot people, is at the one on California Street. The new Whole Foods at Market and Dolores “is too Paleo diet-centric,” he says, “but we know that fad is going to be extinct soon.”
Lifestyle:
In the daily digest for Upper Rockridge on Nextdoor, a “private social network for you, your neighbors and your community,” Elliott Medrich came across an announcement: “Your nearby neighbors in Mountain View Cemetery have started a new Nextdoor website!” This probably relieves the boredom of the afterlife.
“Know someone who lives in Mountain View Cemetery?” asks the posting. “Invite them to join Nextdoor!”
Now don’t get all offended if the response from the inhabitants is muted. They tend to be standoffish, but it’s nothing personal.
Ed Rose read Kristen Brown’s Sunday Business section story about polyamory in the East Bay. And when he finished reading it, he turned a few pages of the section, and found a fullpage ad for Sprint: “Start a Framily with your wife, kids and Mike from accounting.”
Reader Eric Warren recently came upon some family correspondence, including a letter written in 1943 from his grandmother to his great-grandmother, when the younger woman moved into a two-bedroom apartment on Clayton Street. She describes the garden, storage space and garage. “The rent is $100 a month but they pay for gas, water and electricity. … It seems a very high rent to us after paying $37.50 here (an apartment on Washington Street), but when Jim told another real estate man what we were getting, he said, ‘You better snap it up before someone else gets it!’ There are no places for rent at reasonable prices.” Thus was it ever.