Let's start the year with a pic of my doorstep. Stained glass window and transom by Al:

Finally, for the first time in my history of writing material for NoeHill, I am handing over a Journal for posting before the year is out. This way, I can just keep making additions to it in the manner of a blog. Well, except that there will be fewer posts than in the typical blog, and the entries will be posted in chronological order.

A favorite meter over on Castro:

I am celebrating the New Year by playing for the first time a recent acquisition - the final volume of Gilbert Rowland's recordings of the complete harpsichord sonatas of Antonio Soler.

Over and over.

In one of those undeserved turns of luck with which my life has been stricken, I read a glowing review of Mr. Rowland's first volume when it was released in 1996. I ordered it, was enchanted, and began a twelve-year pilgrimage.

It was not an easy journey, as since the albums were released with maddening irregularity, I never knew when to expect the next, and there was an agonizing drought during 2004-5 when I feared that the collection might not be completed.

But now I have it all: 137 sonatas, sixteen glorious hours on thirteen disks.

Prancing in the footsteps of the late Fernando Valenti, Rowland is one of the modern generation of harpsichordists who can somehow flog that fussy little beast into dynamic expression undreamt of by pioneers like Landowska, bless her heart, and Kirkpatrick, for all his scholarly contributions, neither of whom I can imagine laughing after their brief childhoods.

And Soler? Soler's debt to Scarlatti is obvious, but Soler stands on Scarlatti's shoulders, and his output, both in quantity and quality, is astonishing considering that he was a monk with a demanding religious routine to follow, not to mention his numerous secular duties at the Escorial like training and leading the choir and performing for the royal family during their extended residences. To think that the harpsichord sonatas represent less than a third of his works!

Rowland tells us that an anonymous obituary was written by a fellow monk the day Soler died and that "mention is ... made of his religious devotion, compassionate nature, scholarly interests, and excessive candor."

I'm going for all of that. Well, except for being fiercely secular.

Some steps on Castro:

On the evening of Saturday the 5th of January, I rode the Segway over to a dinner party a few blocks away since parking at night is impossible, and I can't walk well enough now to do it on foot. Alas, I was ignoring Mother's admonition to look where I'm going and consequently discovered an unseen obstacle and took a hard fall - hurting my right hand, scraping my left leg, and utterly destroying my favorite pair of Dockers.

But of course it was unthinkable not to pick myself up and press on to dinner, where the hosts taped up my leg and I discovered that my hand wouldn't operate a fork well enough to cut lasagna.

The hand changed color, swelled up, and was pretty much useless for the next several days, so I broke down and phoned my doctor's office on Thursday. Since I insisted on seeing her rather than her colleague, I had to wait the following Monday morning. And then after she sent me for an x-ray, there was a delay until Wednesday evening in getting word back to me that I had sustained an oblique fracture of the second metacarpal in my right hand with moderate displacement, and, to get less technical, sprained the devil outta my thumb. The good news is that the orthopedist worked me in on Thursday.

As I was shuffling across Stockton street on the way to the orthopedist, I saw that I was running out of time in the crosswalk and broke into a trot. Now, I don't know why I was thinking I could run when I can barely walk, but after the first couple of strides my legs failed, and as the lights turned, I fell in the crosswalk...in front of the cars.

They were generous.

Luckily, I had landed mainly on my left arm/hand and right knee...the previously undamaged and thus fresh extremities. Scraped the knee, but luckily, the hand was only bruised and the Calvins were unharmed, No no, the blue denim trousers.

The orthopedist and I decided that my hand might heal well enough just in a cast to get me through my remaining golden years without surgery to correct the displacement. He also gave me a cortisone shot in the thumb which was completely painless owing to my briefly blacking out when he whipped out this syringe with a three-inch needle on it that you could see down the barrel of, and I'm thinking, omigod! he's gonna run it in from the tip of my thumb!

Sybil, very good at pointed questions after sixty years of managing Merrill and the kids, delicately asked whether my delay in getting treatment had caused problems. I told her not much - other than a week or so of extra pain, an eleven-day delay in the beginning of the healing process, and some possible additional displacement in the fracture. Hmmmm, should maybe think about this.

By highly ironic coincidence, my Dutch friend Rina, who's coming to visit me in March, broke her hand the day before I broke mine. Of course being a woman, she sought medical help immediately and is by now halfway through her sentence in the cast. How boring! Or is there something to learn here?

Naw, my friends mutter, he'll never learn, but to them I say, nonsense! I am now very clear that during unanticipated dismounts, I must immediately let go of the handlebars.

The old model Segways like mine are steered by twisting the left handle grip, which frees up the right hand for carrying things like large packages or small casts. The abrasion and bruising from yesterday morning's pratfall on Stockton Street are not bad enough to ground me, so I zipped down to the barber this morning, brandishing my cast at the nay-sayers.

My friend Bob heaved a great sigh, "At least you're consistent."

"Well then," I responded, "you may address me as Your Consistency."

Since then, friends have suggested alternative forms: Your Obstinacy, Your Recalcitrance, and Your Incorrigibility...among others less kind.

Here's some beauty. See the following for a disquisition on truth:

For the past several days, Merck has had a two-full-page advertisement in the San Francisco Chronicle. Below, I quote exactly from the text, with my interleaved comments:

"Are you taking Zetia® ... or Vytorin®...?

"If so, you may be worried about recent news stories questioning the benefit of these medicines...[ellipsis theirs] on the basis of a single study that has generated a lot of confusion. [oh yes, the 'confusion'!!!!! In the first place, the study was theirs, and its conclusions were quite clear, as numerous news articles have demonstrated. For example, here's one from yesterday's New York Times .

'Confusion' is what Merck is trying with this clever ad to create in order to keep the profit pipeline open. They made untold millions by stalling for two years publication of their negative study, and the last thing they want anybody to do is be 'worried' enough not to buy Zetia.]

"In fact, ZETIA and VYTORIN have been proven to lower LDL (bad) cholesterol along with diet in multiple clinical studies involving thousands of patients. Both the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association agree that lowering bad cholesterol is important. [Both sentences are 100% true even though neither of them addresses the issue. See my link above. They are pure smoke screen and misdirection.]

"All of us at Merck and Schering-Plough proudly stand behind the established efficacy and safety profiles of ZETIA and VYTORIN. [and we're hoping you'll be safe and join us and your neighbors on our bandwagon.]

"If you have high cholesterol, follow your doctor's recommendations on eating right, staying active, and taking your prescribed medicines." [No argument here, except this time they left out the part about asking your doctor whether you might benefit from Zetia. That's in a different ad campaign. Wouldn't want to 'confuse' the public by putting it in here.]

[The above is followed by two columns of the standard sort of disclaimer, right in the middle of which is the following sentence: ]

"ZETIA has not been shown to prevent heart disease or heart attacks." [Oh. Well, you ask, then why in the world would anyone want to take it? And then you realize that by burying this tidbit down in the middle of the blather in the lower part of the page, they can defend themselves against lawsuits by claiming that they warned users that the drug was useless. Meanwhile, they tout the drug in the top half, beyond which few readers will venture.]

The levels of greed and mendacity displayed by Merck are egregious. Merck made millions while hundreds, thousands? ten of thousands? of people died while taking a drug that was useless. The executives of this company are mass murders. They should be hanged on the White House lawn, live on prime-time television.

As it is, they will remain fat, smug, and obscenely wealthy...laughing at all us fools for letting them get away with it.

Actually, their behavior is even worse than I've had space to discuss. Here's that link again: New York Times .

Ahhh, the suffering:

There was a Great Moment in Tennis this morning in the men's finals at the Australian Open.

Djokovic's mother grabbed a medallion hanging at her throat, brought it to her lips, and in a brazen appeal to the Chair Umpire in the Sky, closed her eyes tightly and kissed it.

That one was answered. He won.

Pity she hadn't prayed instead for an end to hunger and suffering.

Another entry in a series explaining the extent of my love for drug companies, unlike my discussion of Merck's Zetia and Vytorin above, a case in which I am personally involved since I woke up one morning in December with macular edema secondary to retinal vein occlusion in my left eye. Which means I couldn't see very well out of it.

Luckily, I was referred to Dr. Anne E. Fung, who attempted to get me into a clinical trial for a new wonder drug, and who then, when I was rejected by the sponsoring drug company because I was HIV+, began treating me with Bevacizumab (Avastin), which Genentech had developed as a cancer drug.

Intraocular treatment with Bevacizumab means that they strap you down, jab a syringe into your eyeball, and squirt in a couple of milligrams of puréed mouse.

OK, I exaggerate slightly. You're not strapped down. They deaden your eyeball and you just hold still. Very still. And it's not really ground-up mouse but rather a mouse antibody that Genentech has brewed in their labs.

The good news is that one injection of it, along with some other treatment, has restored much of the vision I had lost. The bad news is that Genentech is actively fighting intraocular use of Avastin since they make fifteen times as much from another drug of theirs called Ranibizumab (Lucentis), derived from the same parent molecule by the same scientist.

Last fall they stopped sales of Avastin to compounding pharmacies, which effectively prevents retinologists from using it when they have exhausted their supply. Dr. Fung was foresighted enough to lay in a stash, and she is spacing out treatments for patients like me who respond well. This will prolong her ability to help patients whose insurance will not cover Lucentis, but her supply is running out.

Well, yes, let's confine the luxury of vision to the folks who can afford it.

Take a look at this while you can still see:

The following was written in response to the posting of photos of Barack Obama wearing a dashiki and suggesting that this somehow made him Moslem.

Recently, our Campaign Headquarters has received reports that the Opposition is planning to disseminate photographs of me wearing Kenyan clothing in an attempt to associate me with Islamic terrorist activity in that country.

To preempt them, I am releasing this photo myself.

Yes, a couple of years ago I was on a visit (although not to Kenya). Yes, I was given native garb. Yes, as a courtesy to the givers, I donned it and was photographed. However, I want to unequivocally state that I am not now, nor have I ever been, a Kenyan, a Moslem, or even a terrorist.

My greatest regret, though, is that the photo was not taken before the ceremonial dinner.

Here's Vesma's acacia:

The enormity is sinking in. Rina arrives tomorrow and it's now 8:00 at night and I'm sitting here paralyzed over what I must do next to prepare for her visit. Instead of snapping into action, I'm writing this.

Yeah.

When Charmazel was due in December, I not only dug out from under a significant percentage of the piles of 'stuff' stacked around, but I also re-organized the whole damn flat so there'd be a nice, private bedroom with a real door and an openable window onto Anne's garden with a view of Twin Peaks. And the window even has blinds.

Now Rina's coming for two weeks, and I look around and realize that the State of Decoration has not progressed a single step since Charmazel was here.

Sigh. I mean, in most ways it's just as well that I got a defective copy of the gay gene and have no love for torch singers or flair for flower arrangement, but it wouldn't have hurt me to have got a basic grasp of interior design and some need to neaten my nest.

I remember fifteen years ago when I was still trying to find a replacement for Allen, and I dated this guy a few times until I figured out that I would never be as important to him as his dog, and I wasn't even asking him to follow me around with a plastic bag.

But before I'd reached that conclusion, we were sitting in my kitchen for probably the fifth time and he looked around and said, "You know, your place is comfortable." I thanked him graciously for the compliment, I think convincingly ignoring the glaring subtext "...in spite of how it looks."

I told that story to my friend David last fall, and he didn't even have to look up before saying, "Well, it's not overdone."

OK, I now have forty-six minutes before bedtime. The pile of boxes in the corner of the dining room is gonna have to just stay there, and there are some stacks of papers at strategic points in the office that will also be remaining. What I will do in the morning is put out my fluffiest towels for her in the bathroom and make up her bed with the good sheets and the duvet, which I hung off the balconette all afternoon in the sun and breeze.

The excellent news from earlier this evening is that I achieved a major breakthrough in design: on two walls I have hung old Mexican blankets from the picture rails, thus getting some color and a little texture into the place. One of those walls is even in the guest room.

Besides, we're not gonna be in here except to sleep, she never having been to California. Hell, after reading about her in my tales since 2001, everybody wants to meet her. She's a little nervous about this, but I tried to reassure her when we Skyped this morning that all she has to do is speak perfect English, out-bicycle Lance Armstrong, and fillet a mackerel in three chops.

Oh, good grief: flowers! Yesyesyes. I'll run down to the Castro in the morning and get a gay florist to sell me some flowers appropriate for a Dutch lady's bedroom.

Outsourcing.

I was showing Rina around and finally got a pic of Bernard Maybeck's Palace of Fine Arts. Maybeck definitely knew what part he liked best:

Stay tuned for some shoe-on-the-other-foot cross-cultural tales occasioned by Rina's visit.

Like just a few minutes ago I burst into laughter in the bathroom upon seeing something Rina had brought with her.

You know, when you're going to a strange land where the natives do not enjoy all the benefits of civilization, you quite naturally bring your toothbrush, anticipating that they'd just use twigs for their dental hygiene.

Well, maybe the toothbrush isn't a good analogy because we all tend to carry our own toothbrushes around.

What I spotted in the bathroom was Rina's was handje (that little Dutch bathcloth sack thingy that they use instead of a bathcloth). It's made out of terrycloth like a bathcloth but instead of being a flat square, it's a smaller rectangle that's folded once and then sewn on two sides so that it forms a sort of mitten that you can slip your hand into.

I own a couple of these that Dutch friends have given me because they knew I'd be fascinated by the novelty. What I didn't know is that apparently they feel it's utterly barbarous to bathe without using one and that you must carry your own to darkest America.

Hmm. Perhaps the folks who gave them to me were subtly trying to civilize me and expected me to actually use them.

Naw.

Backing up a little bit, I should mention that Rina was a bit nervous about getting through customs upon arrival. Well, see, Europeans have heard those stories about travelers who disappear without a trace and then, after a year in the Weight Loss Program of an Egyptian prison, are repatriated once it is determined that they are not the Person of Interest that the CIA had thought.

I had tried to reassure her that since she looks exactly like what she is, a secular Dutch grandmother (albeit young-looking), she was unlikely to fit any terrorist profile. Still, she was much relieved to make it through the questioning without even a threat of waterboarding or rendition. Actually, she said the most interesting part was not the questions they asked her about herself, but rather the ones they asked about me!

Well, hell, they already know it all since under Bush's new rules they're monitoring our library use, listening to our phone conversations, and reading our email.

That's why I'm confessing everything in advance right here on NoeHill: the crime-thought, the sectarianism, the listening to NPR, the ACLU membership, the Prius-driving, the recycling ... all of it.

Even taking this pic of some fence art over near Casa Guadalupe although I have deleted it from my hard drive:

Now that that's taken care of, more highlights from Rina's visit. Like how we're riding down the street and I spot a mailbox. She offers to jump out and mail the letter, so I hand it over. But when she gets out, she walks all the way around the mailbox before cautiously reaching in and pulling the tray open.

But of course. She'd never seen one, and there aren't any instructions on an American mailbox. You see your mother reaching in there and opening the tray. And then closing it and opening it again to make sure the letter slid down inside properly.

Or when I take her to In-N-Out Burger for her first real American hamburger and she perplexes the young clerk by asking for mayonnaise for her fries. Poor little thing had never seen a Dutch or Flemish person before.

Or when we go next door for Angela's baby shower. (See Queer Baby Making.) Rina brought from the Netherlands the muisjes for the traditional celebratory dish Beschuit met Muisjes, literally "Rusk with Baby Mice" although it sounds tastier in Dutch. OK, the little mice are sugar sprinkles colored pink or blue, as appropriate. Yep, we got that tradition from them.

Or whenever it comes time to pay at restaurants and the issue of American tipping arises. Intellectually, Europeans understand that our waiters here are not paid a living wage and are utterly dependent on tips since no service charge is added as it typically is in European countries. That's intellectually. But emotionally, it is excruciating for her to have to see all that extra money on the table.

Then again, there is no clash at all for Rina when we go to the cosmetics department at Nordstrom's and I discover that women at cosmetics counters speak an international language that I can only partially understand.

Rina loves boats, so we rode the ferry over to Tiburon, where I took this pic. Surely you didn't expect a shot of picturesque sailboats in the marina:

First, some blue stairs:

From: Area S Blackout Warden
To: Area S Citizens
Date: 29 March 2008
Subj: Compliance Report

Pursuant to my duties as described in People's Republik Green Regulation 5301.433, on the evening of 29 March between 2000 and 2100 hours I conducted surveillance excursions throughout Area S to determine compliance with the Earth Day Blackout.

A full report will be issued upon completion of the statistical analyses in approximately one week.

A summary report can be issued immediately: Dreadful. A bare majority participated.

At least at the neighborhood level. Compliance at the city level was little better, although your warden could see that quite a few downtown highrises were less bright, the Bay Bridge tower lights were off, and vehicular traffic in the neighborhood was reduced.

So it's a start.

Of course I imagine that as a counter-protest against this godless Californication the citizens of Odessa left their full-size SUVs idling in their driveways for the hour.

With the lights on.

How 'bout a red gate:

Few Pleasures More Sublime Department

Going after that itch under the cast with a rusty letter opener.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhh.

A leafy door:

When we last looked at Avastin, we described how our Bay Area voracious pharmaceutical predator Genentech is blocking use of Avastin to treat some forms of blindness (most specifically my form) because they make another drug costing fifteen times as much that they prefer doctors to use.

Meanwhile, the latest news on Avastin is that the FDA yesterday approved its use in treating late-stage breast cancer. I quote from an article in this morning's San Francisco Chronicle:

"Last year, Avastin surpassed Genentech's previous top-selling cancer drug, Rituxan, bringing the South San Francisco biotechnology giant $2.3 billion in revenue in 2007, when it primarily was prescribed to treat lung and colon cancer. Analysts have estimated Genentech could reap $1 billion in additional sales with its expansion to breast cancer patients.

"In after-hours trading, Genentech stock jumped $5.80, or 8 percent, to trade at $77.40.

"But some breast cancer activists expressed concerns about the drug's efficacy as well as its expense, which is estimated at about $84,700 for an average 11-month course of therapy. [The concern over the efficacy was merely that it didn't seem to increase life expectancy. Worth concern, I'd think.] ....

"Genentech officials said the FDA approval allows breast cancer patients to apply for the company's patient assistance program, which caps the annual cost of the drug to consumers and insurers at $55,000 a year. The program is open to patients whose annual income does not exceed $100,000." [I am speculating that for persons whose income is less than $55,000, Genentech's generosity may extend to lowering the price all the way down to the user's annual income even though this would be the camel's nose of Socialized Medicine under the tent. I'm trying to organize a Gratitude Prayer Vigil on Genentech's front lawn although I've been warned that their jack-booted, mace-spraying, taser-and-truncheon-wielding Private Peace Officers are standing ready to maintain order, and that their extra billion bucks will buy a lot of these thugs.]

After reading an earlier rant of mine, a friend pointed out that neither of us would be alive now were it not for the drug companies. True enough, but both of us would be walking now if it weren't for the automobile industry, and neither industry is selling its products for any reason other than to make money. I certain don't think the pharmaceuticals are any greedier than the auto industry. The difference is that since most of us would find it easier to do without a new car than without a new drug that would prolong our sight or our lives, we find Big Pharm pricing its products out of our reach somehow more egregious.

Particularly when we notice that their research on vaccines and antibiotics, which prevent or cure disease, is minimal while their main efforts go into drugs that merely treat disease, drugs that bring them greater profits because you will have to keep buying them as long as you live...not that it isn't reassuring that Glaxco, Squibb, Pfizer, Merck, et al. very much want me to live to at least 90, but it is rather less comforting to realize that they also want me to be sick the entire time.

And there's hideous greed like Abbot's Norvir ploy. The drug was initially marketed to be used as one of three in an AIDS cocktail in 1996. But then about 2002 doctors discovered that the stuff could be prescribed at a quarter of the original dosage because it somehow potentiated the other AIDS meds. Reducing the dosage had the additional beneficial effect of relieving some of its ugly side effects as well as cutting the enormous cost by three-quarters.

By this time Abbot had already recovered all of their 200 million dollars in research costs and had made billions of dollars in profits, but their response to the reduction in dosages was to quadruple the price. That's just the outline. Actually it was far uglier than I describe, a truly sordid tale well substantiated by leaked internal documents...and various lawsuits and appeals to the FDA - which, alas, by this time was in Bush's hands.

Gloria's bottlebrush:

I feel that far too many people nowadays, starting with myself, are too quick to take offense; but still, yet another occasion for it has come to my attention.

There have been a couple of fatal shark attacks on the west coast in the past week. Both followed the usual pattern in which the victim is bitten and then bleeds to death before he can be got to the hospital.

Surely I'm not the only person who would be just horribly offended if some shark bit off half my leg and then, instead of finding it the most delicious thing he'd ever tasted, shuddered and spat it out. My abhorrence of the waste of food is even greater when it's me.

More research completes the pattern. The shark attack victims we read about are all tough and stringy and just stinking of testosterone. On the other hand, have you ever heard of a shark attack on a prepubescent parochial schoolgirl?

I thought not. That's because there's never a morsel left, and the rosary sinks to the bottom of the sea.

Here's an SF Tenderloin doorway:

I was nearly banqueted to death Thursday night.

My friend Michael, the one whose siblings browbeat him fifteen years ago into moving back to Taiwan to take care of their mother, was on a business trip to this country and took a couple of days of vacation to stop in SF and complete his extrication of himself from a real estate tangle.

To celebrate this, he took five of his friends to Great China in Berkeley, where he had reserved the best table and pre-ordered the Beijing duck.

I'll be researching the proper names, etc on this, but as a preliminary report, here's the dinner:

First course, hot and sour soup, as good as I've ever had.

Second course, a dish featuring a tasty, if wonderfully strange, gelatinous substance that looked like clear jello but was somehow extracted from green beans.

Third course, the Beijing duck, definitely the best preparation of this dish I ever ate.

Fourth course, a crab meat and egg dish that I'd never eaten but was very good.

Fifth course, snow pea shoots and leaves. Never had better.

Sixth course, an excellent lemon shrimp dish.

And finally, fresh cold orange wedges.

Not to mention great conversation and fine companionship.

Olga's specialty:

A frantic week had actually begun the day before Michael's banquet, when I got started with Olga on the physical therapy for my hand.

The day after the banquet, I went off to USCF hospital to try to get into a clinical study in hopes of improving my walking, and the nice young woman agreed that the previous night's stupendous banquet might have contributed to the next morning's higher-than-desirable blood pressure. Alas, turns out they didn't want me for the usual reason.

The good news is that the young woman was kind enough to go ahead and do a physical test on me that pretty well diagnosed my problem and gave me a little hope that some improvement might be gotten.

Very tasty meal with my fine friend Stephen at Nirvana in the Castro on Friday night. Mixed fish and shellfish cooked in yellow curry and coconut milk with spinach noodles. Marinated and grilled upper joint chicken wing appetizer. And a martini. I hadn't had a martini since well before any of the restaurant staff were born. It was frighteningly effective as a conversation stimulant, especially since neither of us needs a stimulant to conversation.

On Saturday I drove down to Redwood City and had a delightful afternoon at a backyard barbecue given for my friend Kobe who's visiting from his exile in Oklahoma. A dozen people: almost all in their late sixties. Delightful folks, fab food, lovely succulent garden from which I was given two specimens and two starts.

Today I had sworn I wasn't leaving the house except that I'm desperate to make some jam since I have given away everything I made last year that didn't have peppers in it, and I was gonna get the last of my kiwi vendor's crop. See, Olga doesn't care for peppers, and it is crucial that I stay on her good side.

So anyhow I got there and the damn kiwi vendor wasn't present. But then I spotted some nice looking cherries for $3/lb. and since they were quite tasty grabbed about five pints from the cranky vendor. Well, hey, at that price, he doesn't have to smile.

So I just made nine jars of cherry jam of them and then combined home hand therapy with cherry pit cleaning. Yep, throw 'em in a pot and simmer 'em a while, then pour in cool water to get the temp down to bearable and reach in there with the bad hand and rub 'em around until the water's merely warm and much of the tenaciously clinging flesh has been removed. From the cherry pits. Olga will be pleased.

A sight on the way to the retinologist:

This morning I whined to my friend Jim about having to see my retinologist this afternoon.

He got back to me that I should be grateful to be able to see her.

I just returned from a couple of days of great fun with Gloria up in Santa Rosa. Her aged cherry tree was just groaning under the load of fruit this year, so I moved a ladder around up in it and picked cherries for two days. Here's the stairway to heaven. Of course I would take the shot after I'd picked every damn cherry in sight:

We took a break in the late afternoon yesterday to go out to the Santa Rosa Market, and I found it just delightful. It's located at the main square downtown and is a combination of a farmers' market and a street fair with all kinds of vendors selling street food. Really great vibes there, and huge numbers of teenagers socializing and families eating street snacks and some quite good produce from the farmers.

I was a bit taken aback, though, as we walked into the main entrance through an area where there were people pushing various political and religious agendas. Not that I was offended by folks espousing their views, but rather that the city had restricted this activity to an area identified with banners as the "Free Speech Zone."

Made me feel real old, as I recall the previous century when we thought of the whole country as a free speech zone. But I guess that was before we got so afraid of everything that we let the government take back all those unnecessary rights. Ate a sweet nectarine, though, and forgot all about my former freedoms.

The inflorescence on this trip was that one of Gloria's cactii (a Gymnocalycium?) had four big buds in the morning, and I thought if I got lucky I might see a couple of 'em open.

I was wrong:

The other great garden news is that her poha is covered with ripening fruit:

The campesinos were back at work this morning, and I staggered home with something like seventeen pounds of cherries plus a couple of big bags of lemons. Gloria's so on top of it that she refrigerated as many cherries as we could get into her refrigerator as soon as they were picked, so I don't have to be in a panic rush to make jams with them. Since it's got good reviews, I'll be making multiple batches of a Nectarine Cherry Jalapeño jam that I first tried last year.

I spent the day sitting on a hard bench for six hours at City Hall, waiting to make sure my testimony would not be needed to preserve the Heart of the City Farmers' Market, but I left after I discovered that hundreds of people were gathered outside the packed hearing room clamoring to be allowed to voice their support for the market.

It seems that some evil administrator on Mayor Newsom's staff had come up with the idea of taking control of the market from the non-profit group that had successfully run it for 27 years, in the process turning it into a source of revenue for the city.

Much squealing ensued. The San Francisco Chronicle had two editorials opposing the takeover, making a case for saving one conveniently located market where people can buy healthy food at reasonable prices.

Letters to the editor pointed out that the price of food is increasing dramatically, and that prices at the farmers' markets will of necessity be rising as the prices of fuel and fertilizer skyrocket.

Others observed that using this market as a revenue center for the city would be equivalent to forcing SF General Hospital to turn a profit.

Caught in the firestorm, Mayor Newsom withdrew his support for the proposal this morning, but even so, hundreds of us showed up to make sure it didn't go through.

At some point, all decency forces us to show some compassion.

The solstice this year coincided with some hot weather and clear skies, so I was able to use this narrow window of opportunity to get some pics of illuminated northern facades.

Meanwhile, More Adventures of Matte Gray, Senior Segwayer:

This morning I encountered at the intersection of Noe and 18th Streets a San Francisco motorcycle cop who nurses a narrow and ungenerous definition of the word, "STOP."

After he chased me down, not too hard when the miscreant is on a vehicle with a top speed of 12MPH, we had a discussion about how he'd seen me before, which is unsurprising since it's pretty hard to hide on a Segway. Then he clarified that what he'd been seeing was some rather incomplete stops, but that this last one was too blatant to ignore.

After some discussion, we agreed that I might mend my ways without the necessity of a ticket....this time. Since then I've developed a technique in which I whip my body forward as the Segway wheels stop so that my momentum catapults me off the line and I return to full speed in an instant.

The letter of the law, that's me.

It's Gay Pride Weekend, and the city is jumping. The streets, especially in this neighborhood, are literally thronged with gays from all over the world who are here, as usual this time of year, having fun on our national gay high holiday. Of course, this year some of them are also taking advantage of their new opportunity to marry.

I was coming up Market Street this afternoon on the Segway and fell in behind a packed F-Market streetcar, hanging out of the back of which were a couple of young women, clearly tourists, laughing and photographing the sights. We exchanged greetings and when I let the streetcar run interference for me as we turned left onto Noe, they added my photo to their collection.

I just love it that here, in this pocket of freedom and tolerance, we can have a parade and even decorate the side of Twin Peaks with a pink triangle this time every year, to help us remember the gays slaughtered by the Nazis.

This delights my warm brotherly old heart until I realize that well, tomorrow morning while the joyous parade is coming up Market Street, our loving Catholic leaders will be denouncing us as "objectively disordered grave threats to the family" from their tax-exempt, gold-encrusted pulpits. And our kindly Mormon leaders will be gathering tax-free funds to mount advertising campaigns against whatever euphemism they use for us filthy faggots. And except for the Episcopalians and the United Church of Christ, all the other Christian denominations join in the grand lie about how much they love us while legislating against us.

Oh please, say what you will about the Reverend Phelps, but he is at least honest enough to proclaim that God Hates Fags, singing lustily:

Jesus loves me more than you,
For the Bible says it's true.

I know a good many Christians, and just as most of them see nothing wrong with moderate alcohol consumption even though their churches mandate complete abstention, they are also kind and decent people who don't believe the message of hate against me that their churches preach. I love them for not buying into that and I celebrate their tolerance.

What I cannot celebrate, though, are the gay Christians. To me, being a gay Christian seems at best to be kissing the boot that kicks you, and often far worse than that. I look at the gay Catholic church in my neighborhood, and I see a bunch of gays who thanks to security in numbers in the safety of San Francisco are somehow protected against the discipline of their church. They worship in a renegade congregation that allows them to take communion as unrepentant practicing homosexuals, so long as they support in all other ways the church that rails against them.

I picture a remote Bavarian village during the Third Reich where by chance the town leaders were gay and thus didn't arrest fellow homosexuals, but rather led quiet lives as good Nazis, supporting Hitler's "final solution" for the Jewish Problem.

Just as the Nazis slaughtered millions of Jews, contemporary Catholics condemn millions of third world poor to deaths of AIDS by actively blocking their access to condoms, running up a death toll that will ultimately surpass Hitler's. In both cases, underground gays support the evil practices of an institution that despises them.

And hey, if somebody thinks I'm coming down too hard on the Mormons and Catholics, I'm acutely aware that the Orthodox Jews, Hindus, Confucians, and Eastern Orthodox (and doubtless others I don't know about) treat gays even worse ... and the Moslems are in a category by themselves.

To lighten the tone, another solstice pic:

And a little tale from my career in the limo business in the early eighties.

A fairly frequent job was to pick up a couple and their tons of luggage at Pier 35 upon their return from a West Coast cruise, and they were normally very mellow and upbeat after the cruise.

One time, though, while we were waiting for the luggage to be unloaded, I noticed that all the men seemed rather subdued and even a bit gloomy. Finally, the reason for the solemnity emerged.

It seems that one of the passengers had died of a heart attack during the cruise. Considering the age of the typical passenger, this was not an especially unusual event, but what made it noteworthy was that the guy had had his attack in the wrong room.

That was bad enough, but what cast a serious pall over the remainder of the voyage for most of the men was that even though the chaplain, the captain, and the other officers all tried to talk the grieving widow out of it, she knew the law and insisted on a burial at sea.

Yeah, crab food.

A great outrage was brought to my attention at the Noe Valley Farmers' Market this morning.

The management and staff of the Oceanside Wastewater Treatment Facility are up in arms and soliciting the support of the citizenry to avert a catastrophe.

They argue eloquently that because this state of the art facility has performed its job in the most competent and economically sound manner since it was completed, it would be an absolute outrage to give it a new name that would drag its fine reputation in the, ummm, mud.

Still, this is San Francisco, and radical leftists abound. A group of them called The Presidential Memorial Commission of San Francisco has managed to collect enough valid signatures to place on this autumn's ballot an initiative that would rename our excellent plant "The George W. Bush Sewage Disposal Facility."

Please join me in protesting this abomination and help save our fine facility's good name!

There was a marketing moment this morning at the Heart of the City Farmers' Market. See, on Wednesday I spotted a new vendor just off the entrance who had little okra so fresh-looking and so gorgeous that even the fussiest Chinese grandmother would just scoop it up by the handful rather than selecting perfect pods. And at $2/lb.

But since it was on the way in, I postponed the purchase until my exit and then, even though I'd picked up the pasillas and jalapeños and Early Girls to go with it, forgot it.

So today I stopped by, and the magic moment had passed. Yep, the vendor'd looked around and seen that hers was too much better at too much less, so she'd jacked it up to $3/lb. And it didn't look quite as nice today, either.

Get it while you can.

The other market observation today is that now that I'm shopping mostly at this market and am there nearly every day it's open, more and more of the vendors are getting to know me....and I, them. And what I'm getting real clear on is that you don't need to go to the Information Booth to learn who's got what. Oh no.

The vendors take little breaks and wander around and socialize....and while they're at it, track each other's offerings like raptors above a prairie dog town.

I was at that big fat farmer's big fat stall and noticed that he had the first of the season's cranberry beans. Woulda considered getting some if I hadn't already picked up a bag of Yerena's romanos, but as I was looking at 'em, my favorite vendor of French prunes appeared at my side and asked me what the beans were. I told him ... and suggested waiting until next week because the shells weren't showing enough red to suggest that they were fully ripe.

A couple of minutes later I finally got a smile out that that cherry vendor I'd described in an earlier tale as cranky when I encountered him in front of Yerena's and asked him with a grin, "Checking out the competition, Mohammed?"

And OK, I try not to do tourist shots in any country, but here's the ruins of the Sutro Baths on a sunshiny summer day:

I spent two hours this noon riding the Segway around the Mission district shopping and eating. Well, that's after stopping at Walgreens and giving the pharmacist a jar of my Nectarine Cherry Jalapeño Jam because he'd gone out of his way to correct an error that I had had no hard proof they'd made.

And then down to Casa Guadalupe, where I picked up a 6 lb. gallina vieja that I'm gonna stew all Sunday morning in puréed tomatillos, pasillas, jalapeños, cilantro, and green onion so as to make a Chicken Chile Verde to take to a Sunday afternoon barbecue given by the downstairs tenants of the folks who had me to a very tasty dinner Wednesday night. It was an astonishing ultrapolylingual evening. There were eight at the table, all of us fluent speakers of English, all but two of us native speakers of English ... well, if we include the Canadians.

Discounting my own miserable foreign language abilities, there were accomplished speakers of Japanese, Cantonese, Mandarin, Indonesian, Malay, Penan (see the host's website), Arabic, Spanish, French, German, Dutch, Finnish, and doubtless other languages that I'll edit this later to add.

But I digress.

This morning's next stop was Dianda bakery, a few doors down Mission Street, to pick up an almond pastry, followed by a leisurely ride ten blocks down Shotwell Street, parallel to Mission three short blocks east, and then over to Rainbow Grocery - with a stop for a carnitas taco at El Tonayense (a renowned taco truck, Google it and marvel at the reviews) - only to discover that Rainbow was out of the half-pint canning jars that the Market Street Safeway no longer carries but that I need in order to make jam out of the nectarines and cute little red jalapeños that are peaking in my pantry.

And then over to the Potrero Hill Safeway to discover that, while they still carry canning jars, they also were out of the half-pint size.

And then a somewhat circuitous route through the Mission back home, where I devoured this Afghan spinach-stuffed flatbread that I had got yesterday at the Crocker Galleria while marketing with Sybil. That Dianda pastry was dessert.

And then a brief nap and now I'm making that jam even though I don't have the right jars for it. This one'll just have to be in pints.

But I stopped to write this because I was laughing too hard at myself to cook. See, the nectarines and lemon juice and sugar and apple mush are in the pot and I'm prepping the jalapeños and wondering how hot they are and take a teeny bit of one of the little cuties into my mouth.

What a disappointment. The damn things are so mild I'm gonna have to use every last one of 'em even though the good news is that they do have a nice flavor. Oh well, can't have everything, and I throw the rest of that chunk in my mouth. Yeeeeeeeeeee Owwwwwwww. Well, gasp, may not have to use all of 'em after all.

Why is it that that cautious little sliver you cut to sample is always the least hot piece of the least hot pepper?

This year I'm putting the production report out and updating it every month or so.

Alas, complications from my broken hand got in the way of preserving anything during the first three months, but then I got busy, at least partly inspired by gifts of lemons from Gloria and from George, my neighbor on Liberty Street. Couldn't just let them sit there and rot. Besides, I spotted a recipe in the San Francisco Chronicle for a Meyer Lemon Marmalade that sounded intersting.

MLM - Meyer Lemon Marmalade - 5 Apr.

LJM - Lemon Jalapeño Marmalade - 10 Apr. Made with lemons Gloria gave Rina and me but which Rina had no room to take back to Amsterdam. Wimpy.

LSLJM - Liberty Street Lemon Jalapeño Marmalade - 20 Apr. Still wimpy.

GLM - Gloria's Lemon Marmalade - 24 Apr. Made at Gloria's house with lemons we picked to order.

CL - Cherry Jam - 11, 28 May. I used no apple in this for pectin, so just boiled it down longer. Not puréed. The one on the 28th, I puréed with the stick blender.

GJLM - Gloria's Lemon Jalapeño Marmalade - 17 May. Made sure there was enough pepper in this one to taste, but it's not very hot. Alas, it set up like glue and is just plain stiff. It's finally sinking in that the classic method of boiling jams until they reach a certain temperature does not factor in variable amounts of pectin.

CAL - Cherry Jam - 17, 19 May.

AAL - Apricot Jam - 19 May. I'm not a big lover of apricot jam, but this one was good enough that I liked it.

CL - Cherry Jam - 28 May, 6 June. No apple. Actually, until further notice I'm holding my breath until I can get apples from Gloria, so the code won't have the "AL" ending. To try to help things set a little better, I'm using two lemons instead of one and boiling them down longer. The June one set like concrete.

SCL - Smoked Cherry Jam - 6 June. OK, this was an accident. I turned my back on it, and it ever-so-slightly burned, but just to the point of that caramalized sugar taste in the sauce for a flan. So if nobody else wants none of this, no problem, as I love it.

CJL - Cherry Jalapeño Jam - 6 June. Not very hot.

CAJL - Cherry Apricot Jalapeño Jam - 7 June. Not hot enough.

CPLi - Cherry Jam flavored with Patak's Hot Lime Relish - 7 June. Different.

RCAJL - Rainier Cherry Apricot Jalapeño Jam - 9 June. I used the Rainier cherries mainly for their color. The jam turned out a nice golden yellow. Medium hot.

NCJL - Nectarine Cherry Jalapeño Jam - 10 June, 12 June, 4 July. Gloria's red cherries in this one, so it's quite red. Medium hot. The ones on 12 June and 4 July are hotter.

AC? - Apricot Cherry Jam - 12 June. The code on the jars includes an "L" with a slash through it, alas not an html character so I can't represent it here. The point is that this one has neither apple nor lemon in it.

LSNL - Lucero Strawberry Nectarine Jam - 22 June. Lucero's strawberries are my local favorite, smaller but more flavorful.

ACJPL - Apricot Cherry Jalapeño Pasilla Jam - 22 June. This one turned out real good. The Pasillas are a good addition. I'm not being so overcautious with the chiles now.

TB - Tayberry Jelly - 27 June, 10 July. Finally, finally, more of that great crowd pleaser. I was able to make only one batch of it last year, so there is pent-up demand.

NL - Nectarine Jam - 27 June.

NCJL - Nectarine, Cherry, Jalapeño Jam - 4 July.

LSJL - Lucero Strawberry Jalapeño Jam - 5 July.

ABJPL - Apricot Blackberry Jalapeño Pasilla Jam - 8 July. I wanted to up the chile flavor without making the jam too hot, so I threw in a red pasilla chile. It worked.

MC - Mango Chutney - 11 July. The first chutney of the season. There are good Mexican mangos in the markets now at a reasonable price. These were ripe, but they still made a pretty good chutney.

PPJL - Plum Pasilla Jalapeño Jam - 13 July. I'm continuing to experiment with Pasillas. I used one pasilla and four small jalapeños in this one, but the jalapeños were very mild, so the jam is not hot. And oh, yes, the plums are from my friend Nancy.

MCACL - Montmorency Cherry Ancho Chile Jam - 16 July. The Montmorency cherries flit through the market in a flash. Grab 'em while you can. I got these to make a crisp and then realized I wouldn't be cooking for anyone before I had houseguests. Thus this jam.

BPJAL - Blackberry, Pasilla Chile, Jalapeño Jam - 6 August. I'm experimenting with boiling apples down to extract the pectin, and I put a couple of cups of the apple mass into the seive. Used one pasilla and two seeded jalapeños. Could have used three.

Pickled Romano beans - 7 August.

NJAL - Nectarine Jalapeño Jam - 8 August.

CNJAL - Cherry Nectarine Jalapeño Jam - 12 August. Well, I saw some cherries at Casa Guadalupe and bought a bag without thinking clearly. So to use them up, I made this jam with some red jalapeños. Decided to purée it at the end, and it set like concrete.

LSJAL - Lucero Strawberry Red Jalapeño and Red Ancho Chile Jam - 29 August. I made this one with apples and lemons from Gloria that I cooked down together, and it may be the best strawberry jam I ever made because I got the chile level up high enough. That said, it was way too hot for the wonderful Liz Crane, the manager of the Noe Valley Farmers' Market.