The Price of Privilege

On the topic of white liberal bliss, one of the most fascinating books I've read in the past year is set, perhaps not coincidentially, right here in my (proverbial) backyard.

Last year, Kentfield psychologist Madeline Levine used anecdotes from her twenty-plus years of practice with Marin County as material for The Price of Privilege. It discusses how the parental pressure that accompanies growing up in upper-middle-class homes--where value as a person is perversely achievement-oriented--has driven many of her teen-aged patients to clinical anxiety, alcoholism, depression and other lovely conditions.

I was thinking about Levine's book last weekend, as I was having lunch out at High-Tech Burrito in Strawberry Village. I was sitting alone on a bench, noshing on the guac-laden creation of this better-than-mediocre-if-not-quite-the-Mission place, watching the kids and parents interact on a beautiful if slightly blustery Sunday afternoon. It was a suburban idyll, to be sure--Stanford sweatshirts, organic stuff, Land Rovers, sweatshop-conscious footwear.

Yet in my business, which consists of educating a great many of these kids, I've seen legions of tragedy. Stories that will wrench your soul, all of which take place in rather gilded surroundings. Levine is controversial, perhaps, but I think she's right.

We live in Marin. These are our children, after a fashion. So what are we going to do about it?

HTML Footnotes:
Madeline Levine: http://www.harpercollins.com/books/9780060595845/The_Price_of_Privilege/index.aspx
High Tech Burrito:http://www.hightechburrito.com/

Just Across The Lagoon

Ring Mountain is a delightful place, often eclipsed by the brighter stars of Mt. Tam and Pt. Reyes. I discovered it this morning, making a commitment to scale the top by lunchtime.

I didn't quite get all the way around to the Tiburon side, but upon making it about halfway up the hill, sat down to admire the view and wolf down my Safeway Signature sandwich. Within my line of sight, I discovered the fascinating juxtaposition of institutions in the photo above.

The buildings in the foreground are those of the Marin Country Day School, an K-8 private school with a sixteen million dollar endowment. It's pure stereotyped Marin; elite(ist) with hippie frosting.
http://www.mcds.org/

The longish building on the shore of the lagoon in the background of the photo, to the left of the bridge, is none other than San Quentin Prison. No explanation needed.
http://www.corr.ca.gov/Visitors/fac_prison_SQ.html

I like this photo because it really seems to capture what I've been discovering about Marin: the paradoxes that are right before our eyes, yet that so many of us just blissfully ignore. It's unlike in SF, where the less desirable (affluent?) elements of society are there with you on the bus, the street, in GG Park. Over there their existence is acknowledged, if only through condemnation. Up here, it seems to be a different story.

Ah, white liberal bliss.

Post-tirade suggestion: get yourself over to Ring Mountain. Bring a sandwich and a digital camera.
http://www.co.marin.ca.us/depts/PK/Main/mcosd/os_park_24.asp

Balancing the Checkbook

An expenditure comparison from last month:

Bridge tolls: $112.00
Meals out: $22.44

This, I suppose, is the how the relatively impoverished manage to afford to live in this delightful place.

In My Mind, I'm Gone to Sausalito

Yes, I miss home.

The weather behind the Orange Curtain is certainly pleasant, and there's lots of rather splendid take-out, but there's just a certain kind of flatness about this place (geographically, cartographically, culturally?) that wears me down.

Of course, there are no theme parks in Marin. Oh, darn.

Mill Valley Requiem

At this, the twilight of what has been a thankfully un-adventurous housesitting gig, I find myself a bit saddened. I am taking out the recycling (literally), changing the paper in the parakeet cage (literally), and re-organizing the fridge as befits my customary "leave no trace" policy. I would like to be Invited Back.

Housesitting, as well as kid- and pet-sitting to an arguably lesser degree (as in these there are witnesses) strikes me as a fascinating social milieu. It's a detached yet strangely intense laser-focus into someone else's life. You eat their cottage cheese, use their detergent, find their kid's month-old dirty sock underneath the sofa cushion as you browse their 614-channels of Comcastic delight.

Yet they're 8,000 miles away, in Bora Bora or something, having a lovely time of it while you stand in their kitchen Making Espresso at Six-Thirty A.M. I dunno, it just strikes me as something that Quentin Tarantino or perhaps Stephen Hawking would have a lot to say about.

Perhaps I could spend a year, or six months, just bouncing my way across Marin in this fashion. My bohemian self slogging from house to house, feeding spaniels, watering ferns, poking around kitchens for the right kind of colander.

It could be a downright pleasant business.

Mill Valley Part Three: The Big Lebowski

Tonight, I took a much-anticipated after-work junket down the hill from this swell house to the Marin Theatre Company (http://www.marintheatre.org), where every Tuesday night is "Pay What You Will" night.

Well, for this individual who very much adores paying-what-he-will (which, due to current pecuinary circumstances, is A Very Small Amount), this was the perfect combination. Not to mention that the MTC is only a stone's throw from the afore-blogged 2 AM Club.

My five dollar trip to see "The Good German" resulted in three conclusions:

• The MTC is an absolute gem. It's an intimate venue that (from my limited experience, which consists of two hours in the third row) puts on excellent semiprofessional theatre for what is (even if you choose to Pay More Than Five Bones) a reasonable price.
• The 2 AM crowd has a great deal of cross-pollination with the MTC crowd. Sociologically, this is quite heartening to me, as I adore a place where folks can appreciate good live theater, but are still down for a pint of PBR after the show.
  
• I have excellent taste, even if I am a painfully cheap SOB. To wit: I adore The Big Lebowski, and Warren David Keith (who played the role of the funeral director in that flick) was on stage tonight at the MTC. Two productions that both involve German Nihilists, and I'm a fan of both.
  

I also visited the Safeway this afternoon, but that's a subject for another post altogether. Never have I seen a mainstream grocery with Multiple Sections of Arugula. Wow.