Science

Call it Afro-Surreal

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I’m not a surrealist. I just paint what I see. — Frida Kahlo

THE PAST AND THE PRELUDE


In his introduction to the classic novel Invisible Man (1952), ambiguous black and literary icon Ralph Ellison says the process of creation was "far more disjointed than [it] sounds … such was the inner-outer subjective-objective process, pied rind and surreal heart."

Ellison’s allusion is to his book’s most perplexing character, Rinehart the Runner, a dandy, pimp, numbers runner, drug dealer, prophet, and preacher. The protagonist of Invisible Man takes on the persona of Rinehart so that "I may not see myself as others see me not." Wearing a mask of dark shades and large-brimmed hat, he is warned by a man known as the fellow with the gun, "Listen Jack, don’t let nobody make you act like Rinehart. You got to have a smooth tongue, a heartless heart, and be ready to do anything."

And Ellison’s lead man enters a world of prostitutes, hopheads, cops on the take, and masochistic parishioners. He says of Rinehart, "He was years ahead of me, and I was a fool. The world in which we live is fluidity, and Rine the Rascal was at home." The marquee of Rinehart’s store-front church declares:

Behold the Invisible!

Thy will be done O Lord!

I See all, Know all, Tell all, Cure all.

You shall see the unknown wonders.

Ellison and Rinehart had seen it, but had no name for it.

In an introduction to prophet Henry Dumas’ 1974 book Ark Of Bones and Other Stories, Amiri Baraka puts forth a term for what he describes as Dumas’ "skill at creating an entirely different world organically connected to this one … the Black aesthetic in its actual contemporary and lived life." The term he puts forth is Afro-Surreal Expressionism.

Dumas had seen it. Baraka had named it.

This is Afro-Surreal!

THIS IS NOT AFRO-SURREAL


A) Surrealism:

Leopold Senghor, poet, first president of Senegal, and African Surrealist, made this distinction: "European Surrealism is empirical. African Surrealism is mystical and metaphorical." Jean-Paul Sartre said that the art of Senghor and the African Surrealist (or Negritude) movement "is revolutionary because it is surrealist, but itself is surrealist because it is black." Afro-Surrealism sees that all "others" who create from their actual, lived experience are surrealist, per Frida Kahlo. The root for "Afro-" can be found in "Afro-Asiatic", meaning a shared language between black, brown and Asian peoples of the world. What was once called the "third world," until the other two collapsed.

B) Afro-Futurism:

Afro-Futurism is a diaspora intellectual and artistic movement that turns to science, technology, and science fiction to speculate on black possibilities in the future. Afro-Surrealism is about the present. There is no need for tomorrow’s-tongue speculation about the future. Concentration camps, bombed-out cities, famines, and enforced sterilization have already happened. To the Afro-Surrealist, the Tasers are here. The Four Horsemen rode through too long ago to recall. What is the future? The future has been around so long it is now the past.

Afro-Surrealists expose this from a "future-past" called RIGHT NOW.

RIGHT NOW, Barack Hussein Obama is America’s first black president.

RIGHT NOW, Afro-Surreal is the best description to the reactions, the genuflections, the twists, and the unexpected turns this "browning" of White-Straight-Male-Western-Civilization has produced.

THE PRESENT, OR RIGHT NOW


San Francisco, the most liberal and artistic city in the nation, has one of the nation’s most rapidly declining black urban populations. This is a sign of a greater illness that is chasing out all artists, renegades, daredevils, and outcasts. No black people means no black artists, and all you yet-untouched freaks are next. Only freaky black art — Afro-Surreal art — in the museums, galleries, concert venues, and streets of this (slightly) fair city can save us!

San Francisco, the land of Afro-Surreal poet laureate Bob Kaufman, can be at the forefront in creating an emerging aesthetic. In this land of buzzwords and catch phrases, Afro-Surreal is necessary to transform how we see things now, how we look at what happened then, and what we can expect to see in the future.

It’s no more coincidence that Kool Keith (as Dr. Octagon) recorded the 1996 Afro-Surreal anthem "Blue Flowers" on Hyde Street, or that Samuel R. Delany based much of his 1974 Afro-Surreal urtext Dhalgren on experiences in San Francisco.

An Afro-Surreal aesthetic addresses these lost legacies and reclaims the souls of our cities, from Kehinde Wiley painting the invisible men (and their invisible motives) in NYC to Yinka Shonibare beheading 17th (and 21st) century sexual tourists of Europe. From Nick Cave’s soundsuits at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts to the words you are reading right now, the message is clear: San Francisco, the world is ready for an Afro-Surreal art movement.

Afro-Surrealism is drifting into contemporary culture on a rowboat with no oars, entering the city to hunt down clues for the cure to this ancient, incurable disease called "western civilization." Or, as Ishmael Reed states, "We are mystical detectives about to make an arrest."

A MANIFESTO OF AFRO-SURREAL


Behold the invisible! You shall see unknown wonders!

1. We have seen these unknown worlds emerging in the works of Wifredo Lam, whose Afro-Cuban origins inspire works that speak of old gods with new faces, and in the works of Jean-Michel Basquiat, who gives us new gods with old faces. We have heard this world in the ebo-horn of Roscoe Mitchell and the lyrics of DOOM. We’ve read it through the words of Henry Dumas, Victor Lavalle, and Darius James. This emerging mosaic of radical influence ranges from Frantz Fanon to Jean Genet. Supernatural undertones of Reed and Zora Neale Hurston mix with the hardscrabble stylings of Chester Himes and William S. Burroughs.

2. Afro-Surreal presupposes that beyond this visible world, there is an invisible world striving to manifest, and it is our job to uncover it. Like the African Surrealists, Afro-Surrealists recognize that nature (including human nature) generates more surreal experiences than any other process could hope to produce.

3. Afro-Surrealists restore the cult of the past. We revisit old ways with new eyes. We appropriate 19th century slavery symbols like Kara Walker, and 18th century colonial ones like Yinka Shonibare. We re-introduce "madness" as visitations from the gods, and acknowledge the possibility of magic. We take up the obsessions of the ancients and kindle the dis-ease, clearing the murk of the collective unconsciousness as it manifests in these dreams called culture.

4. Afro-Surrealists use excess as the only legitimate means of subversion, and hybridization as a form of disobedience. The collages of Romare Bearden and Wangechi Mutu, the prose of Reed, and the music of the Art Ensemble of Chicago and Antipop Consortium express this overflow.

Afro-Surrealists distort reality for emotional impact. 50 Cent and his cold monotone and Walter Benjamin and his chilly shock tactics can kiss our ass. Enough! We want to feel something! We want to weep on record.

5. Afro-Surrealists strive for rococo: the beautiful, the sensuous, and the whimsical. We turn to Sun Ra, Toni Morrison, and Ghostface Killa. We look to Kehinde Wiley, whose observation about the black male body applies to all art and culture: "There is no objective image. And there is no way to objectively view the image itself."

6. The Afro-Surrealist life is fluid, filled with aliases and census- defying classifications. It has no address or phone number, no single discipline or calling. Afro-Surrealists are highly-paid short-term commodities (as opposed to poorly-paid long term ones, a.k.a. slaves).

Afro-Surrealists are ambiguous. "Am I black or white? Am I straight, or gay? Controversy!"

Afro-Surrealism rejects the quiet servitude that characterizes existing roles for African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, women and queer folk. Only through the mixing, melding, and cross-conversion of these supposed classifications can there be hope for liberation. Afro-Surrealism is intersexed, Afro-Asiatic, Afro-Cuban, mystic, silly, and profound.

7. The Afro-Surrealist wears a mask while reading Leopold Senghor.

8. Ambiguous as Prince, black as Fanon, literary as Reed, dandy as André Leon Tally, the Afro-Surrealist seeks definition in the absurdity of a "post-racial" world.

9. In fashion (John Galliano; Yohji Yamamoto) and the theater (Suzan Lori-Parks), Afro-Surreal excavates the remnants of this post-apocalypse with dandified flair, a smooth tongue and a heartless heart.

10. Afro-Surrealists create sensuous gods to hunt down beautiful collapsed icons.

AFRO-SURREALISM IN ACTION


San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of the African Diaspora present the works of Mutu, William Pope L., Trenton Doyle Hancock, Glenn Ligon, Wiley, Shonibare, and Walker en masse, with Lam’s Jungle as a center piece. Lorraine Hansbury Theater stages Genet’s The Blacks and Baraka’s The Dutchman, while San Francisco Opera adapts Aimé Césaire’s Caliban and the Fillmore has an Afro-punk retrospective. Afro-Surreal adaptations of Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo (1972), Hurston’s Tell My Horse (1937), and Marvel’s Black Panther will grace the silver-screen.

These are the first steps in an illustrious and fantastic journey. When we finally reach those unknown shores, we will say, with blood beneath our nails and mud on our boots:

This is Afro-Surreal!

NRDC honors sustainable food movement

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By Steven T. Jones
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Even though I tweaked them at the end of my bike story this week, the Natural Resources Defense Council should be commended for recognizing the importance of pushing for a sustainable food system, which it did on Saturday night at the Academy of Science with its first-ever Growing Green Awards.

Journalist and awards chair Michael Pollan has been the food movement’s idea guy and de facto leader, a role he’s not entirely comfortable with. “There’s no question I’m an advocate as a journalist,” the author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma and other important works told me. “But the difference is as a movement leader, you speak for the movement, and I need to continue to speak for myself….As a journalist, your first obligation is to your readers.”

The life aquatic

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SEAWORTHY DVDS If France’s Georges Méliès is known as the first astronomer of cinema, then overlooked director Jean Painlevé might be considered its first aquanaut. The son of French prime minister and mathematician Paul Painlevé, Jean grew up amid the progressive decadence of the Parisian Belle Époque and sowed his anarchist seeds in the bloody aftermath of the Great War of 1914. Studying mathematics and biology at the Sorbonne, Painlevé made a vertiginous departure toward cinema after meeting surrealist artists Antonin Artaud, Jean Vigo, and Luis Buñuel.

Calling his work "neo-zoological drama", Painlevé began assembling hundreds of bizarre and unprecedented nature films, many of which were photographed entirely underwater, beginning in the late 1920s. Science is Fiction: 23 Films by Jean Painlevé, a three-DVD collection released this month by Criterion, presents an invaluable survey of the director’s most extraordinary aquacades. Carving a unique niche in cinema as a scientific fabulist, Painlevé’s creations explored the liminal boundaries of technology and fantasy through the evolving apparatus of the camera.

While his early films like Oeufs d’épinoche (The Stickleback Eggs, 1928) — a vivisection of fish eggs being fertilized — are essentially technical investigations into slow-motion and microscopy, his mid-1930s and postwar work finds the director at his most extravagant. Throughout films like Le Vampire (The Vampire, 1945) and Assassins d’eau douce (Freshwater Assassins, 1947), bats transform into Nazis, starfish become ballerinas, and crustaceans conduct sweeping symphonies. Painlevé’s use of "exotic" soundtracking, pseudoscientific narration and sudden, bewildering close-ups creates a singular, anthropomorphic vision of the animal world rather than a mere biological document of it.

Painlevé released one of his most popular films, L’hippocampe (The Sea Horse, 1934) shortly before the beginning of World War II. Though produced under extreme circumstances — the director claims he rigged an electric shocking device to his body to stay awake for days on end so he could film the creature giving birth — The Sea Horse was an overnight success with the French public. During this time, Painlevé also cofounded the world’s first diver’s club with SCUBA inventor Yves le Prieur. Reportedly convening meetings at a private swimming pool in Paris, the Club Des Sous-L’Eau (literally "underwater" but also a pun that, in French, means "drunk") staged aquatic spectacles like underwater ballets and bicycle races on the pool floor.

He continued making short films until the late 1970s and died in 1989. The Criterion DVD also features an eight-part television documentary, Jean Painlevé Through His Films, as well as a 90-minute musical tribute composed by rock band Yo La Tengo.
www.criterion.com

Have a little art: Vagaboom! Fun(d)raiser

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By Molly Freedenberg

vagab0409a.jpg
A high-flyin’ Vagaboom! participant

Some of my favorite memories of elementary school are due to arts programming: watching singing science duo Janet and Judy or a traveling theater troupe act out The Jabberwocky in the round; playing flute in the band and dancing to Broadway hits in our annual musical; studying — and then making my own versions of — pointillist, Impressionist, and landscape artwork. Who would I be if I’d never learned to read music? To appreciate silent theater? To identify Georgia O’Keeffe? And what will the world be like in the future if today’s kids don’t learn to explore their creativity? The artists and activists behind Vagaboom! hope we never have to answer that question. The group of acrobats, musicians, actors, and artists — including Del Arte graduate Martina Oskarsson, Cirque Destino cofounder Marina Karadjieva, and Think13 visionary Dee Kennedy — have pooled their resources and channeled their individual expert training into creating a nonprofit that brings arts programs to kids, particularly those least likely to be exposed to art and music. Lucky for us, we adults will get a taste of what Vagaboom! does at its May 2 fundraiser. The action-packed event features music by Think 13, Cohen, Scattershot Theory, and DJ Centipede; dance performances; acrobatics; and scenes from the experimental theater piece Simple Matters. Sure beats math class …

Vagaboom! Fun(d)raiser Sat/2, 8pm. $10-$20. SomArts, 934 Brannan, SF. www.vagaboom.org

What do (people) want?

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andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:
Have you heard of a study that analyzed biometric feedback from self-identified male bisexuals, and the notable finding was that the overwhelming majority of these men were in fact homosexual, not bisexual? The conclusion of the study was that "true" male bisexuality is extremely rare. (For what it’s worth, I consider myself a "true" male bisexual, but what do I know?)

I also heard about another study from at least 10 years ago that tracked the sexual fantasies of self-identified lesbians, and the surprising result was that some 50 percent of these women actually fantasized about men while doing it with their female partners.

Have you heard of these, and would you care to comment?
Love,

Actually Here!

Dear Here:

I have, of course, and they’re all fascinating, partly for the science (which is generally super-simple and not easily misinterpreted) and partly for the reactions in the various communities whenever one of these studies is reported, which are frankly pretty funny.

The "there’s no such thing as male bisexuality" studies have received the most press, and the biggest, most offended reactions, but it’s not like the researchers at Northwestern University and the Center for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto set out to disprove the existence of an entire sexual orientation! All they did was hook up some volunteers to a plethysmograph and show them porn. I think the first researchers were probably as surprised as anyone when the self-identified bi men failed to respond in a recognizably "bi" manner. About three-quarters of the bi men read as completely gay according to their penises (do penises lie?), while the rest were indistinguishable from the self-identified straight guys. There was no recognizable "bi" pattern of arousal, and the subjects seemed overwhelmingly to fall on one or the other end of the Kinsey scale:

Regardless of whether the men were gay, straight or bisexual, they showed about four times more arousal" to one sex or the other, said Gerulf Rieger… the study’s lead author.

So obviously, you think you exist but you’re wrong, Bi Guy!

Okay, no. What do I really think? I think, for one thing , it’s all funny since in my little bubble of not only San Francisco-ness but San Francisco sex educator-ness, fake bi guys who are actually straight but want hot bi chicks to think they’re cool way outnumber bi guys who are actually gay but closeted. Also, I do think you exist. Clearly truly bi men are rarer even than we thought, but I’m fairly certain that you are not a figment of your own or my imagination, and I think sexuality is a mite more complicated than penile plethysmography.

Another study, described here in a ScienceDaily article from 2003, and distinguished by including only people who identified as gay or straight, turned up more bisexual women than expected, but replicated earlier results where gay and straight (but not bi) men responded consistent with their self-identification: In contrast, both homosexual and heterosexual women showed a bisexual pattern of psychological as well as genital arousal. That is, heterosexual women were just as sexually aroused by watching female stimuli as by watching male stimuli.

The extraordinary article on female desire that ran in The New York Times Magazine (www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/magazine/25desire) introduced recent research by Meredith Chivers, who’s been following up on the research above with the added fillip of throwing some ape porn in the mix and requiring volunteers to report their own perceptions of their arousal levels, which proved wildly inaccurate: During shots of lesbian coupling, heterosexual women reported less excitement than their vaginas indicated; watching gay men, they reported a great deal less; and viewing heterosexual intercourse, they reported much more. Among the lesbian volunteers, the two readings converged when women appeared on the screen. But when the films featured only men, the lesbians reported less engagement than the plethysmograph recorded. Whether straight or gay, the women claimed almost no arousal whatsoever while staring at the bonobos.

Good to know!

As for the studies (self-reported behavior, no telemetry) that show a high percentage of self-described lesbians fantasizing about men while having lesbisex, eh. People fantasize about all kinds of things, particularly things they feel uncomfortable about. Are those women fake lesbians? The furthest I can go with that is to say that we’ve seen that women are much (so much!) more likely than men to be bisexual by attraction. I’m assuming that some of the women studied are physically attracted to both, but emotionally more attached to women ("Whom do you fall in love with?" is a hugely important but oft-neglected measure of sexual orientation) and some are into women but enjoy fantasies of committing unnatural acts with men. That some must be really not that into chicks but have chosen for whatever reason to live as lesbians is undeniable but just not that important. They wouldn’t be the first people to partner with someone not of their preferred gender, or the last, and their existence does not cast doubt on anyone else’s authenticity. Can anyone do that?

Love,

Andrea

Don’t forget to read Andrea at Carnal Nation.com.

alt.sex.column: What do (people) want?

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By Andrea Nemerson. View more alt.sex columns here. Email your questions to Andrea: andrea@altsexcolumn.com

AltSex_Icon.jpg

Dear Andrea:
Have you heard of a study that analyzed biometric feedback from self-identified male bisexuals, and the notable finding was that the overwhelming majority of these men were in fact homosexual, not bisexual? The conclusion of the study was that "true" male bisexuality is extremely rare. (For what it’s worth, I consider myself a "true" male bisexual, but what do I know?)

I also heard about another study from at least 10 years ago that tracked the sexual fantasies of self-identified lesbians, and the surprising result was that some 50 percent of these women actually fantasized about men while doing it with their female partners.

Have you heard of these, and would you care to comment?
Love,

Actually Here!

Dear Here:

I have, of course, and they’re all fascinating, partly for the science (which is generally super-simple and not easily misinterpreted) and partly for the reactions in the various communities whenever one of these studies is reported, which are frankly pretty funny.

The "there’s no such thing as male bisexuality" studies have received the most press, and the biggest, most offended reactions, but it’s not like the researchers at Northwestern University and the Center for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto set out to disprove the existence of an entire sexual orientation! All they did was hook up some volunteers to a plethysmograph and show them porn. I think the first researchers were probably as surprised as anyone when the self-identified bi men failed to respond in a recognizably "bi" manner. About three-quarters of the bi men read as completely gay according to their penises (do penises lie?), while the rest were indistinguishable from the self-identified straight guys. There was no recognizable "bi" pattern of arousal, and the subjects seemed overwhelmingly to fall on one or the other end of the Kinsey scale:

Men and their Moogs: Junior Boys vs. Sebastien Tellier

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By Andre Torrez

I went to Bimbo’s to see Junior Boys on a whim. I knew someone who had an extra spot on the list. I didn’t know what I was getting into, and was just happy to hang with my friend. Parking was a bitch, but we settled on a lot and made our way into the swank club. North Beach was definitely in the house.

Looking around, I couldn’t help but notice that this wasn’t exactly my scene. I felt like I was in an episode from The O.C. where the kids somehow get to hang in the bar and watch the latest “cool indie band” circa-2004. Waiting in anticipation of a band you don’t know usually proves to be anti-climactic, but there was something about the performance itself that was amiss. It didn’t take long for me to put my finger on it: I was annoyed at the lack of camaraderie between the band members, especially the core songwriting duo: the front man and the mysteriously silent man on the Moog synthesizer directly to his left. The drummer was in the background as expected, albeit all Genesis-looking because of the cool lighting, but the lead singer and this Moog man were placed prominently next to one another even though Moog man never spoke a word. I guess he had a cool haircut and all, but if you’ve got nothing to say and little to do, why take the spotlight? He might as well have been a prop. It was almost as if a wall was dividing front man and Moog man — they had little to no interaction with one another on stage. Not even a glance.

juniorboys.jpg
Moog man and frontman.

The two main men of Junior Boys would be better off pursuing separate musical paths, instead of catering to trends by fusing the electronic with the organic. With his scruffy look, the lead singer-guitarist came across as more of a traditional songwriter. He focused on lyrics and on connections with the audience. He was adept at banter and seemed to thrive off the audience’s energy. The man at the Moog admittedly held down the electronic portion of the show, but he was utterly detached. Given the opportunity to let loose, I’m sure he’d come alive — if he just wasn’t stifled by that other guy with the words and guitar. Both parties would flourish creatively if they just ditched the commercial combination sound. But who am I to judge? It’s probably payin’ the bills.

One night later at the Independent, Sebastien Tellier had the Moog-and-guitar combo down to a science. His sound was a perfect balance of heavy, deep, and dark elements. He had a lot more fun mixing synthesizers and rock star posturing, with a guitar representing a full-on phallus.

Grand Pu Bah

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You might think, with today’s endless parade of television cooking shows, that the dining public’s appetite for a theatrical restaurant experience might be whetted. But mostly this does not seem to be the case. Oh, we have plenty of display kitchens, and soufflés finished tableside, and occasionally you might happen upon on a cheese cart, or a foie gras or champagne cart. Yet the typical restaurant experience is notably slim on any actual culinary drama, unless something goes dreadfully wrong: a steak burned, a chicken paillard undercooked, a tray of dirty dishes dropped.

Then there might be a scene, with some lively dialogue. But this doesn’t happen often. The usual course of events is that food is ordered and, later, brought, ready to eat. If your restaurant has a display kitchen, you might have caught a glimpse of line cooks doing something or other, but the likelihood is that you wouldn’t be able to figure out what they were up to, and almost certainly you would have no way of knowing whose plate they were working on.

Imagine my delight, then, when the chicken volcano ($19) at Grand Pu Bah, an 18-month-old Thai restaurant near the Concourse Exhibition Center at Eighth and Brannan streets, turned out to be almost as exciting as a high school science experiment. The roasted bird arrived, still mounted on its upright roaster. The server, after muttering a few cautionary words (or perhaps a prayer), emptied a small tumbler of some kind of liquor over the chicken (actually a game hen) — I thought I heard “151” and “tequila” — lit a match, and set my dinner gloriously ablaze. He did not say Opa!, as the Greeks do when lighting saganaki cheese on fire, but the omission did not matter, because the hen burned a beautiful, steady, Bunsen-burner blue for seconds that might have stretched into a minute.

When the flame finally died out, the bird had a crisp-crinkly golden skin as impressive as that of any roast chicken in town. Even if the dish had been bad, I would have said nothing, having enjoyed the show (and discreetly warmed my hands). But the meat was tender and moist, the accompanying roasted cauliflower florets and potato quarters tasty (despite not being torched), and the ramekins of mysterious dipping sauces (one red, the other neatly divided between red and green by a bisecting diagonal, like a flag) welcome. Even good chicken benefits from a bit of extra help. My only complaint: the hen was awkward to eat. The server, having kindled his blue blaze and departed, did not return to lift the finished item from its perch. Since I couldn’t see a graceful way to do it, I just hacked away as discreetly as possible while thinking there must be a more elegant way.

Elegance, interestingly, otherwise pervades Grand Pu Bah. Despite the silly name, the restaurant is surely among the most stylish Thai places in the city and is, really, stylish by any standard. The space, which spreads away from the entrance like a baseball diamond folding out from home plate, includes a handsomely backlit bar, walls textured with what appear to be wood cuttings and offset bricks, and paper lamps that hang from the ceiling like giant porcini stems being air-cured for some kind of mushroom prosciutto. The overall flavor of the design suggests a contemporary California restaurant, and indeed executive chef Teerapong Khantawisut’s menu emphasizes “local and seasonal ingredients.” At some point will this be required by law?

The menu offers “Thai beach cuisine” in the “family style” — sharing is encouraged — and includes a raw bar (with oysters and sashimi), a conventional array of appetizers, soups, salads, and main courses, and a large collection of shareable plates grouped under the rubric “street food.” Why the chicken volcano should have been slotted in here isn’t obvious; it’s hardly street food and not all that shareable.

Some of the other offerings here spread themselves around the table much more easily: sizzling spicy beef pad cha ($18), for instance, strips of flank steak tossed with slivers of bell pepper and fresh chile and cubes of Thai eggplant and electrified by kaffir lime leaf and wild ginger. For a slightly sweeter tack, there’s roasted duck in a broad-shouldered but well-behaved coconut-red curry sauce fructified by pineapple chunks, lychee nuts, grapes, and tomato quarters. (Tomato is a fruit, don’t forget!)

And, of course, appetizers and salads are shareable, even if they’re not marked that way. Sizzling spicy prawns ($10) were indeed sizzling — they arrived, like fajitas, on a hot cast-iron platter — and were souped up with chiles, cilantro, lemongrass, and lime. I liked the chunked taro root added as ballast to fresh rolls ($8), otherwise filled with a traditional jumble of tofu, basil, cilantro, and cucumber; the root meat was both creamy and weighty. A similarly moderating influence would have benefited the seafood salad ($14), which was a kind of southeast Asian caesar salad — romaine hearts tossed with prawns, scallops, and calamari — but finished with a spicy lime vinaigrette that was the spiciest vinaigrette I’ve ever had, including my own, and George likes spicy chicken. It isn’t every day you come across a salad that’s almost too hot to eat. This one had me panting like a dog on a blazing August afternoon.

We laughed, we shared, we panted, we thought the dessert menu was a little perfunctory and was the one dimension in which Grand Pu Bah is more Thai than California. Fried bananas ($8) come with beer ice cream — weird, slightly sharp but acceptable. And yet: never again. The beer is Singha, which is always good and is at its best when icy cold, not as actual ice.

GRAND PU BAH
Mon.-Fri., 11 a.m.-10 p.m.,
Sat.-Sun., 5-10 p.m
88 Division, SF
(415) 255-8188/9
www.grandpubahrestaurant.com
Full bar
AE/DS/MC/V
Loud
Wheelchair accessible

Ask Nate

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The Guardian introduces a new weekly advice column from Nathan Ballard, press secretary to Mayor Gavin Newsom. We hope you enjoy his insights as much as we always have.

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Dear Nate:

Times are tough in San Francisco for a lot of people, but my life seems to be bottoming out these days. My good city job just got eliminated, the after school program my kids love was cut, my elderly grandmother just lost her home health nurse, and the police still have no idea who murdered my husband last year. He was even shot right in front of one of those crime cameras. What should I do?

Desperate for Help

Dear Dessie:

I reject the premise of your question. Things are going great in San Francisco, particularly under this mayor’s strong leadership. But we feel your pain, which seems to stem from the Board of Supervisors refusing to give the Police Department more money or the authority to constantly monitor those cameras. Sup. Aaron Peskin is the reason your husband’s killer hasn’t been caught. He may actually be the murderer.

Nate

Dear Nate:

I was thinking about going into politics. Do you have any advice for someone considering running for office?

Budding Candidate

Dear Bud:

As my boss has repeatedly said, being mayor is the toughest and most thankless job in the world. He’s constantly dealing with uppity supervisors and complaining constituents, at least when he’s in town. And if you’re one of those spineless, whiny so-called progressives, my advice is to just do something else. Get a real job, something in the private sector. But if you share Mayor Newsom’s belief in building a better San Francisco with more public-private partnerships — and you’ve got a lot of rich friends — I say go for it. But make sure you hire the best advisers by calling Storefront Political Media and Earned Media. We — , er, uh, I mean they really know what they’re doing.

Nate

Dear Nate:

I’m new to San Francisco and trying to understand the political dynamics here. Is the central struggle really between progressives and moderates? Those are the two labels I hear the most, but it doesn’t make much sense to me. What about liberal vs. conservative?

Political Science Student

Dear Poli-Sci:

I reject the label progressive, and so does the San Francisco Chronicle now that we convinced them to. So actually the central struggle in this town is between the radical and unrealistic ultra-liberals and moderates like Gavin Newsom. The mayor can be a fiscal conservative when he needs to be, and he’s liberal on social issues, which makes him a moderate and therefore the voice of reason. He could even be a progressive on some issues, if there were such a thing as a progressive, which there’s not. But he’s never ultra-anything, because that would make him crazy, which he also isn’t. Is that clear?

Nate

Who’s leaving the Chron

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Reporter Steve Rubenstein, Pulitzer Prize winning photographer Kim Komenich along with five other photographers, cartoonist Tom Meyer, music critic Joel Selvin and long time science writer and California Media Workers Guild representative Carl Hall.

These are just a few of the names on the list of about 100 employees “volunteering” to quit the Chronicle and accept a buyout of one year’s pay, plus medical insurance from Hearst Corp. by the end of today.

You can read the full list at author/journalist Frances Dinkelspiel’s blog.

Hearst claims it needs to layoff 150 employees and end seniority to avoid closing the 144-year-old newspaper. So, after today, Hearst will begin sending out pink slips to at least 50 of the Chron’s remaining employees.

I’m sure it is sad over at the Chron, and it’s never fun to write about the woes of the newspaper industry, but if I were leaving with a year’s pay in my back pocket and dreams of starting my own non-profit online newspaper dancing in my head, I’d be tempted to shout, “Adios Suckers!” in a really loud voice…just before the door hit me on the way out.
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Objects of Obsession: Branch out

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SFBG’s Laura Peach rounds up local items and experiences to die for. See her last installment here.

As a girl, I would spend summers wandering through island woods at my grandparent’s house. I always loved the birch tree bark, and would peel pieces off the trees to make little dresses of white and pale pink for my dolls, always wishing that there was a big enough section of bark to create a skirt my size.

Although I was never able to wear the wood of my childhood, recently I’ve been on the lookout for ways to bring the forest alive in my everyday urban home life. Here are a few of my favorite finds, wooden through and through. They just may bring out a different type of tree hugger in you.

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1. Wooden Wallet

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A real slab of wood is not the best thing to have in your pocket. No one wants slivers in their behind. But the thoughtful, science geek designers at San Francisco’s Hlaska were enamored by the beauty and grace of wood grain. They reproduced the patterns found in a real pine tree onto Italian leather for their Evergreen wallet ($125).

Hlaska, 2033 Fillmore, SF. (415) 440-1999, www.hlaska.com

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2. Log Life

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This watering can ($16) is the sweetest stump I’ve ever seen. Hydrate thirsty plants using the log pitcher and they may be inspired to grow grander and greener. Made from recycled plastic, so no trees were harmed and you can hold the branch handle guilt free. Oh, it also makes for a nifty vase.

Doe SF, 629 A Haight, SF. (415) 558-8588, www.doe-sf.com

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3. Pink Poison

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The bright, bold berries bursting off the black branch on this t-shirt ($28) are supposedly poisonous. But such a pretty pink color makes them hard to resist. I might be tempted to pop one in my mouth.
Designed by San Francisco contemporary art golden boyTucker Nichols exclusively for Richmond’s hippest object/art/book shop Park Life, this berried branch shirt is a catchy closet addition for sure.

Park Life, 220 Clement, SF. (415) 386-7275, www.parklifestore.com

Freeing the press

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Norwin S. Yoffie Career Achievement Award

ROBERT PORTERFIELD


Bob Porterfield is a shit-disturber, an old-fashioned investigative reporter who has no favorites, no sacred cows, and no fear of offending anyone. Since his first story — a profile of a YMCA social program published in Eugene, Ore.’s The Register-Guard in 1959, when he was 15 — Porterfield has had ink in his veins. He’s shared two Pulitzer Prizes (first for an Anchorage Daily News report on the Teamsters Union in 1975 and then for a series on the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority for The Boston Globe), won more than two dozen other prizes and worked on a long list of major investigative projects.

He has become something of an expert in computer-assisted reporting and information systems — but is still a down-to-earth guy who never forgot the value of traditional, hands-on digging. Back in 1986, he was on a team at Newsday looking into the federal Synfuels Corp., a scandal-plagued agency that was shut down in the wake of his stories.

"I remember once we were looking for property records on a Synfuels Corp. project linked to [former CIA Director) Bill Casey," he told me. "I wound up going down to Plymouth, N.C., (population 4,000), and I found this musty old office with two older women sitting there, knitting. There was no index book, nothing computerized. But when I explained what I was looking for, one of the women remembered the parcel of land I was talking about and pulled out the exact documents for me."

Porterfield has devoted a tremendous amount of time to teaching and mentoring, showing young reporters how to use public records to find stories. "I’m glad to see [President Obama’s] new directive on openness, but I hope it trickles down to the independent agencies," he said. "Because there’s been way, way too much secrecy." (Tim Redmond)

Beverly Kees Educator Award

ALAN GIBSON


Alan Gibson is reclaiming the Founding Fathers from conservatives with

his recent book Understanding the Founding: The Crucial Questions (University Press of Kansas, 2007). It examines the progressive ideals that guided early American political thought.

"The Founding Fathers are often captured by conservatives," Gibson told the Guardian. "But there is no clear line of legacy. It is much more complex than that. Conservative restoration politics are dangerous and not historically accurate."

As an undergraduate, Gibson cultivated an interest in issues of separation of church and state, which led to doctoral studies on James Madison, the namesake of the Society of Professional Journalists’ annual Freedom of Information awards. "Madison was the most progressive of all [the Founding Fathers] when it comes to freedom of the press," Gibson said. "He helped develop the idea that American government should be responsive to public opinion, and the role of newspapers was to make sure that an authentic public opinion was set forth." Gibson, a political science professor at California State University-Chico, lectures at various colleges across the country. Understanding the Founding will be published in paperback later this year. (Laura Peach)

Professional Journalists

MARJIE LUNDSTROM


Journalists often get alarming tips about practices within Child Protective Services (CPS) agencies, but it has always been a nearly impossible task to overcome privacy protections and get even basic information about how CPS handles reports of child abuse or neglect.

"It’s a difficult agency to write about, for some good reasons," Sacramento Bee reporter Marjie Lundstrom, who set out in 2007 to investigate complaints about Sacramento’s CPS, told the Guardian. "They operate in such a vacuum with very little public scrutiny."

She had started to piece together some information from coroner’s records and other public documents when Senate Bill 39 went into effect in January 2008, "and it was just amazing what it opened up."

The bill reveals CPS files in cases where the child has died, allowing Lundstrom to expose the negligence of CPS workers in responding to abuse reports, even those from doctors. "I do feel like what we were able to show, because of the law, where workers made flagrant mistakes that costs kids their lives," she said.

But many CPS records are still secret. Next, after writing several stories about CPS that sparked a grand jury investigation, Lundstrom intends to expose problems within the internal accountability procedures at CPS. (Steven T. Jones)

HILARY COSTA AND JOHN SIMERMAN


When the news broke last September that 15-year-old Jazzmin Davis had been murdered by her aunt after suffering months of abuse and neglect in her Antioch home, Bay Area News Group reporters Hilary Costa and John Simerman submitted a public records request about the girl’s case history with the San Francisco Human Services Agency.

The city denied the request for nearly two months, using a privacy claim. Undeterred, the journalists took the step of testing out Senate Bill 39, a relatively new piece of legislation that mandates public disclosure of findings and information about children who have died of abuse or neglect. A judge eventually ordered that the records be released.

Although highly redacted, the nearly 700-page paper trail told the girl’s story in the form of hand-written notes, report cards, medical records, caseworker visits, and other detailed documents. The records led to a package of stories that exposed a series of failures and violations of state regulations by an HSA social worker, raising questions about agency practices and spurring a review of hundreds of other foster care cases.

"This story’s been so important to me," Costa told the Guardian. "It felt like somebody owed it to Jazzmin to find out what happened to her." (Rebecca Bowe)

Interactive Media

AUTUMN CRUZ AND MITCHELL BROOKS


Sacramento Bee photographer Autumn Cruz had been covering the trial of three-year-old K.C. Balbuena’s murder for several months when she came up with the concept of creating an interactive online courtroom. With the help of Bee graphic journalist Mitchell Brooks, Cruz made public the essential pieces of evidence and information to those outside the courtroom doors.

Viewers can take a virtual tour of the exhibits and documents, along with video and audio statements and interrogations. "As a journalist, you’re fighting every day for your right to information," Cruz told the Guardian.

Although Balbuena’s mother and roommate were found guilty of the murder in early 2008, Cruz laments her inability to bring back the child she grew to know so intimately only after his life was cut short. "I think my bringing his plight to the public will hopefully prevent similar things from happening to other children." (Joe Sciareillo)

Citizen

BERT ROBINSON


Journalist Bert Robinson is a longtime journalist who now serves as assistant managing editor for the San Jose Mercury News. But he’s being honored for his work as a citizen serving on San Jose’s Sunshine Reform Task Force.

"We set out on our sunshine ordinance adventure a few years ago. We found we were faring worse in court, and we couldn’t afford increased court costs," Robinson, a member of the California First Amendment Coalition, told the Guardian.

The project received political endorsements across the spectrum, but the initiative has had problems with the city council’s Rules Committee, controlled by San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed, who has supported sunshine in the past.

"We achieved progress with public meeting requirements, but when you get into public records, city staff argue that rules are ‘too cumbersome’ … They say all sorts of things might happen if they become public, [which is] entirely hypothetical," Robinson said.

Task Force work that was slated to last six months has now dragged on for two years. "The city process grinds you down," Robinson said. But he says he’s committed to seeing it through. (Ben Terrall)

Legal Counsel

JAMES EWERT


James Ewert, an attorney with the California Newspaper Publishers Association, has long battled what he calls widespread secrecy in government. So in 2004, he played an instrumental role in providing greater public access to government meetings and records, resulting in the passage that November of Proposition 59, the Sunshine Amendment of California’s constitution.

Most recently Ewert helped Sen. Leland Yee (D-San Francisco) with legislation protecting teachers from retribution from administrators when they defend the First Amendment rights of journalism students. Next Ewert hopes to allow greater scrutiny of public/press partnerships and how tax dollars are used in labor negotiations by the public university systems.

Ewert says the public’s right to know is still severely hampered by public safety concerns, including restrictions on journalists’ rights to interview prisoners and obtain information about police officers. But luckily for the public, Ewert is still on the job. (Andrew Shaw)

Student Journalists — High School

REDWOOD BARK


Before April 2008, Drew Ross had never had to defend the existence of the Eureka High School Redwood Bark, where he was the editor. But after arriving on campus one Monday morning to find that former principal Robert Steffen had removed 450 copies of a 20-page color edition of the paper, Ross and his staff fought back.

Steffen claimed that the nude, dream-like drawing by artist Natalie Gonzalez had ushered in a handful of complaints from students and parents. Steffen justified the action by saying he was "stomping out the flames before they became a forest fire."

"We told him we wanted to hold onto the paper but he recycled them," Ross told the Guardian. "We don’t make the paper for it to be thrown away. And we lost a lot of advertising on this."

Ross complained about censorship and got help from the Student Press Law Center and the American Civil Liberties Union. By the next day, the censorship story went front page at newspapers and Internet sites all over the country. Eventually Steffen not only sent out a public apology, he paid for the next 20-page color edition.

"We are now armed with knowledge of our rights," Ross said. "And the community knows the Redwood Bark has rights." (Deia de Brito)

SHASTA HIGH SCHOOL’S THE VOLCANO


Shasta High School student Amanda Cope speaks passionately about freedom of speech after her brush with censorship, telling the Guardian, "We are preserving the validity of the Constitution. Free speech is a protection, a safety, that lets us function normally without fear."

Cope was editor-in-chief of the Shasta High School student paper, The Volcano, when a controversy flared over the paper’s end-of-year issue, which featured a front-page image of a student burning an American flag. Shasta High principal Milan Woollard was already considering shutting down The Volcano when the issue came out and publicly stated: "This cements that decision."

But following a maelstrom of objection from Cope and the rest of The Volcano staff in what looked like a form of censorship in schools, the school district reversed its decision. "I think a lot of students feel they are marginalized in society. They’re teenagers. They don’t have many rights and they feel like they’re squished by adults and people in general," Cope said. "The student paper becomes an outlet for those feelings, and a way for students to explore their world." (Juliette Tang)

THE SCOTS EXPRESS


Last November, the principal of Carlmont High School in Belmont shut down the student paper, The Scots Express. School officials claimed that the paper lacked adequate faculty oversight after it published a satirical article about the writer’s sex appeal.

Editor-in-chief Alex Zhang fought back against what he saw as censorship and rejected school officials’ justifications. "I just wanted my paper back," he told the Guardian.

In response to the uproar over what many saw as a muzzling of the press, the Sequoia Union High School District began training Carlmont staff on First Amendment rights and mandated an overhaul of the school’s freedom of speech policy. The district is planning an expansion of its journalism programs in the school curriculum and a partnership with the San Francisco Peninsula Press Club.

Zhang is working on relaunching the publication in late March under the faculty oversight of English teacher Raphael Kauffmann. "You can’t have a democracy without freedom of information," Zhang said. "And I’m proud to be one of those young journalists who care about the freedom of information." (Joe Sciarrillo)

Advocacy

KATHI AUSTIN


As the Guardian chronicled in a cover story last year ("Hunting the lord of war," June 23, 2008), San Francisco-based human rights investigator Kathi Austin has spent almost two decades tracking down and exposing those who have made a business out of human rights violations.

Most recently, Austin helped bring the notorious Viktor Bout, a Russian entrepreneur accused of illegally trafficking weapons to brutal regimes from Colombia to the Congo.

"A human rights violation is considered a violation that is carried out by a state actor," Austin told the Guardian. "We were trying to change the whole field of human rights to philosophically say we should be going after these private perpetrators as well."

Thanks largely to Austin’s work, Bout was arrested in Thailand in March 2008 and will likely face criminal charges in the United States. Despite working in treacherous places like Angola and Rwanda, doing meticulous and time-consuming research, Austin said her approach is simple: "What’s wrong and who’s doing it?"

Her patience and persistent pursuit of international justice have led Austin to positions at the U.N., the World Bank, the Center for Human Rights, and the Council on Foreign Relations, to name a few. A Paramount picture featuring Angelina Jolie as Austin is reportedly in production — a fittingly karmic return of celebrity for someone who has worked so long under the public radar. (Breena Kerr)

Electronic access

MAPLIGHT.ORG


Once upon a time, before 2005, the only way to connect the dots between the dollars contributed to politicians and the special access and favorable laws they subsequently granted to contributors was to wade through reams of campaign finance filings. While everyone knew that money talked, few knew just how much campaign cash was dictating public policy.

But now, thanks to MAPlight.org, a Berkeley nonprofit that uses sophisticated analytical tools to produce visually pleasing, easy-to-use charts, there is now a fun, simple way to follow the money.

MAPlight began by putting up data connected to the pro-consumer bill informally known as the Car Buyer’s Bill of Rights. "The data showed that car dealers gave twice as much to Sacramento legislators who voted to kill the bill than to those who voted to pass it," executive director David Newman recalled.

Next, MAPlight pioneered the combination of campaign dollars and politicians’ votes when it launched its U.S. Congress site in May 2007. Most recently its research showed that House members who voted for the $700 billion financial bailout bill received 50 percent more money from the financial services industry than those who voted against it.

Newman plans to expand to all 50 states. "Wherever there is journalism to be done, MAPlight can provide support and help promote openness and transparency in government." (Sarah Phelan)


The Northern California Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists hosts its annual James Madison Awards dinner March 18 in the New Delhi Restaurant, 160 Ellis St., SF. The no-host reception begins at 5:50 p.m. followed by dinner and the awards programs at 6:30 p.m. Tickets are $50 for SPJ members and $70 for non-members. For reservations or information, contact Freedom of Information Committee chair David Greene at (510) 208-7744 or dgreene@thefirstamendment.org or visit www.spjchapters.org/norcal.

DeLong: The Stimulus Ostriches

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J. Bradford DeLong is a contributing writer for the Project Syndicate news series. DeLong is Professor of Economics at the University of California at Berkeley and a former Assistant US Treasury Secretary.

The Stimulus Ostriches

By J. Bradford DeLong

BERKELEY – Of all the strange things that have happened this winter, perhaps the strangest has been the emergence of large-scale Republican Party opposition to the Obama administration’s effort to keep American unemployment from jumping to 10% or higher. There is no doubt that had John McCain won the presidential election last November, a very similar deficit-spending stimulus package to the Obama plan – perhaps with more tax cuts and fewer spending increases – would have moved through Congress with unanimous Republican support.

As N. Gregory Mankiw said of a stimulus package back in 2003, when he was President George W. Bush’s chief economic advisor, this is not rocket science. Deficit spending in a recession, he said, “help[s] maintain the aggregate demand for goods and services. There is nothing novel about this. It is very conventional short-run stabilization policy: you can find it in all of the leading textbooks…”

A search for patterns in the light – and dark

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A search for patterns in the light — and in the dark

ENIGMATIC: TREVOR PAGLEN AND THE EVIDENCE OF THINGS NOT SEEN

Trevor Paglen’s section of the 2008 SECA Art Award exhibition is somewhat centrally located — you have to pass through it to get to Jordan Kantor’s room, as well as to a small room containing pieces by all four awardees. This positioning resonates, for Paglen is nothing if not conscious of maps and their meanings, and his contributions have visual connections to the other three artists. The dizzying, multicolored swirls of Nine Reconnaissance Satellites over the Sonora Pass, a c-print from 2008, aren’t far from Tauba Auerbach’s post-op art graphics. The night skies in Paglen’s photography aren’t far from the deep blues and flaring lights of Kantor’s 2008 oil-on-canvas Untitled (lens flare), where the painted camera effects are also suggestive of one of Kantor’s Paglenesque earlier subjects, the 1986 Challenger explosion.

Such ties are helpful, because the flagrantly governmental subject matter and complicatedly political perspectives of Paglen’s work make it too easy to downplay or ignore its artistic facets. The white spots of 2008’s PARCAE Constellation in Draco (Naval Ocean Surveillance System, USA 160) are a photo-corollary to those found in Bruce Conner’s lovely late-era ink drawings. (Like Paglen, the late Conner kept his eye on activities the U.S. hides in plain sight, and that awareness adds undercurrents to works of his that might otherwise be coded as purely spiritual.) When Paglen, from a mile away, uses a long-lens camera to uncover the ambiguous activities of an unmarked 737 in a black spot in Las Vegas, I’m reminded of the telescopic images of cruelty at the end of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1957 Salò. But unlike Pasolini, Paglen is far from being in full charge of the staging, so his seductive images can only blurrily hint at barbarism or sinister motive.

"Photography — and this is especially true after September 11 — is a performance," Paglen told Thomas Keenan in an Aperture article from last year. "To photograph is to exercise the right to photograph. Nowadays, people get locked up for photographing the Brooklyn Bridge." Paglen’s pictures are the most successful portion of his SECA contribution — his presentation of emblematic Pentagon patches, while provocative and even aesthetically playful, raises (much like William E. Jones’ so-called 2007 film Tearoom) problems of authorship. By looking up at the sky and revealing that it’s looking back down at us, Paglen creates a grounded answer to the work of aerial photographers such as Michael Light, whose visions reorient one’s perspective. Paglen isn’t out to make you see clearly. He wants you to look deeper. And wonder. (Johnny Ray Huston)

For a review of Trevor Paglen’s new book, Blank Spots on the Map (Dutton), see Lit, page 42.

HER EMPIRE OF SIGNS: NOT-SO-RANDOM NOTES ON TAUBA AUERBACH

Tauba Auerbach is shaking up her spin-off sphere of the so-called Mission School with optical investigations into that interzone between the figurative and abstract, representational systems and what they communicate, order and chaos. This Bay Area native — at 27, the youngest of the current SECA Award winners — was likewise shaken to the core as an eight-year-old during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. "Actually I was at gymnastic class on Judah Street and on the uneven bars," she recalls by phone from New York City, where she now resides. "I was swinging from the low bar to the high bar when it just moved away from me and I fell. It was absolute chaos. Adults screaming conflicting instructions to us. I saw the windows bow in and out, and I remember driving home over the hill and seeing smoke and thinking our house was gone."

The memory bubbles up — as vivid and close to the surface as Auerbach’s perusal of chance and broken glass, Shatter II (2008), in the SECA exhibition — while she talks about her latest project: a piece for the Exploratorium’s "Geometry Playground," which opens in September. The title sounds like a perfect fit: a brain-teasing sense of play underlies many of Auerbach’s projects, including the design of new mathematical symbols for Cambridge University logician Byron Cook’s research into computer science’s famed termination, or halting, problem. "I think there are shortcomings in any coding system," she muses. "Binary is so interesting because the components are so limited…. Every time you want ambiguity in a binary system, you have to simulate it."

Auerbach’s darting intelligence peels off in many directions, much like her eye-boggling patterns. The artist’s old day job, in which she learned the lost art of sign painting at New Bohemia Signs in the Mission District, dovetails with her witty, abstracted deconstructions — or explosions — of writing and semaphore systems, assorted alphabets, Morse code, and eye charts. Two such 2006 works, The Whole Alphabet, From the Center Out, Digital V and …VI, which layer letters drawn from a digital clock, are on display at SFMOMA.

Penetrating glances into chaos and change yielded Auerbach’s largest pieces — the 2008 Crumple paintings — in which she crumpled paper, photographed the results, and then translated the creases onto canvas with halftone printing and paint carefully applied by hand. The folds materialize as one steps further back — and break down into dizzying pixels close up. Multiple entry points exist down this rabbit hole, first carved out by Op artist Bridget Riley. But as with Auerbach’s 2008 Static chromogenic prints, which saw her looking for randomness in analog TV static, the hidden spectrums and other visual tricks are rendered with an elegance a scientist would appreciate. (Kimberly Chun)

NEGATIVE LIGHT: BEYOND THE CANDID CAMERA WITH JORDAN KANTOR

In Jordan Kantor’s paintings, meaning is candid. When the word "candid" entered the English language in the 17th century, it was closer to its Latin roots, meaning "bright," "light," "radiant," "glow," or "white," with whiteness symbolizing purity and sincerity. Later, as the word approached then copulated with the critical language of photography — that crazy new field of "light writing" initially accused of everything from demonic possession to being a potential assassin of traditional visual arts like painting — "candid" gave birth to its common usage today, meaning "frank," "blunt," "severe," a harsh snapshot, brutally honest vision. So severity in art became intertwined with truth.

Kantor’s local gallery, Ratio 3, with its emphasis on projects’ overall coherence, is a welcome home to his current trajectory. His pieces for the SECA Art Award exhibition are alive with many truths at once, their spaces equally negative and positive. The three Untitled (lens flare) paintings and Untitled (HD lens flare), all from 2008, make you step back, only to feel as if your are standing closer than before. Untitled (Surgery) (2006–07) and Untitled (Eclipse) (2008) glow with negative light. This work is in stride with Kantor’s participation in important group shows at Galeria Luisa Strina in São Paolo ("This Is Not a Void," 2008) and New York’s Lombard-Freid Projects ("Image Processor," 2007) that dealt with our unstable relationship with images. It confirms that he is a photographer who just happens to use paint. I see aspects of Linda Connor’s slow, large exposures here, as well as Cindy Sherman’s foxes-in-the-headlights humans.

Kantor isn’t hardened by academia, though he has a PhD from Harvard and teaches at California College of the Arts. The brilliant candidness in his pictures is tied to an aesthetic understanding of human desires and scientific pursuits, but also to a humanistic refusal to be neutral. If you spend enough time with his work, you start to see that it is candid in its celebration, not just in its criticism. It reminds me of the ending to poet James Wright’s "A Christmas Greeting," from Shall We Gather at the River (1963), where the dead and the living ask the same questions: "Charlie, I don’t know what to say to you," the poet pines to someone he might have known or just imagined, "Except Good Evening, Greetings, and Good Night, / God Bless Us Every One. Your grave is white. / What are you doing here?" (Ari Messer)

Love potion

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› culture@sfbg.com

According to Greek mythology, Aphrodite emerged from the foaming sea bearing foods, drinks, and herbs that stimulated sexual desire. While at first this tale led to the belief in ocean-derived aphrodisiacs such as oysters, by now the net has been flung much wider, and it seems that anything remotely suggestive is touted as a love potion. Just in time for Valentine’s Day, we consulted Bay Area sexologist Joy Nordenstrom, who specializes in aphrodisiac-based dinner parties, to help us sort through all of the chemical compounds thought to rev our engines. Here’s our guide to 10 love drugs that’ll put you in the mood.

ASPARAGUS


The law of likeness, or "sympathetic magic" as it’s sometimes called, goes something like this: if it looks like a sex organ, it’ll make you horny. Clearly phallic in shape, this sexy stalk is not only a psychological aphrodisiac, but also a chemical one. Asparagus — which you can get in season at Zuckerman’s Farm at Ferry Plaza Farmer’s Market (1 Ferry Building, SF. 415-291-3276, www.ferryplazafarmersmarket.com), contains substantial amounts of aspartic acid, an amino acid that neutralizes excess amounts of ammonia, which makes us tired and sexually disinterested. This nutritious vegetable also contains asparagine, a diuretic that excites the urinary passages. For a truly erotic side dish, try serving creamed asparagus alongside an Italian sausage and a pair of Yukon Gold potatoes.

CAVIAR


Rare. Expensive. Mouth-watering. One of the essential food groups of czars and czarinas, "harlot’s eggs" contain a high level of phosphorous, a chemical that’s essential for the healthy production of love juice. Set the mood by serving this pickled delicacy in a silver caviar presentoir with chilled vodka or champagne. Better still, skip the presentoir and invite your paramour to Tsar Nicoulai Caviar Café (1 Ferry Building #12, SF. 415-288-8630, www.tsarnicoulai.com), the company that pioneered sustainable domestic sturgeon farming back in 1979.

CHILI PEPPERS


No doubt about it, a chili pepper will fire up your sex drive. Capsaicin, the chemical responsible for hotness, gets the heart pumping, the blood flowing, and the adrenaline coursing through your veins. For the very best of these sexy stimulants, head over to the Farmer’s Market at the Ferry Building on Saturdays, where you’ll find a dazzling array of fresh peppers at the Tierra Vegetables stand (1 Ferry Building, SF. 707-837-8366; www.tierravegetables.com). For a highly concentrated dose, try their sizzling hot C. Chinese chili jam. Yow!

CHOCOLATE


Legend has it that Montezuma, the Aztec ruler, drank 50 cups of chocolate each day to better serve his harem of 600. Soon after Montezuma offered Cortés a cup, chocolate arrived in Spain, where it was sweetened with cane sugar, vanilla, and cinnamon — and promptly denounced by the Spanish clergy. Besides serving up a jolt of caffeine and a taste that everyone loves, chocolate also contains phenylethylamine (PEA), the molecule that makes you feel like you’re in love. For "obsessively good" chocolate with a social conscience, head over to TCHO (17 Pier 45, SF. 415-981-0189, www.tcho.com), where you can pair fruity, nutty, and earthy chocolates with a piping cup of Blue Bottle coffee.

GINSENG


If you’ve ever ventured into a Chinese medicine shop, you’ve probably passed a barrel or two of a fleshy, tan-colored, striated root called ginseng. This root, according to Chinese herbalists, aids the kidney and the liver, which are the organs responsible for fertility and sexual arousal. "The kidney is the body’s reservoir of energy," explained herbalist Efrem Korngold, Lac (Chinese Medicine Works , 1201 Noe, SF. 415-285-0931, www.chinese-medicine-works.com). "Under a great deal of stress, you have to dip into these reserves often, and the body goes into survival mode. When living to just survive, there’s not a lot of juice left over for sex or procreation." Brew a pot of ginseng and replenish your juices.

HORNY GOAT WEED


Horny Goat Weed — or Chinese Viagra, as it’s often called — is a time-tested aphrodisiac. According to legend, a Chinese goat herder first discovered it when he noticed his flock getting randy after grazing on the herb. The active ingredient, epicedium, increases the essential energy (ching) needed for sexual vitality. Although you can easily buy a box of Horny Goat Weed tea over the counter at places like Great China Herb Co. (857 Washington, SF; 415-982-2195), don’t take it without first consulting an herbalist like Tim Khang, Lac. (Tim J. Khang Acupuncture and Herbs, 4002 California, SF; 415-680-8620). Since the brew tastes rather bitter on its own, try mixing it with honey or agave nectar.

OUZO


For an impromptu lesson on love, head over to Greek Imports Inc (6524 Mission, Daly City. 650-994-3321, www.greekimportsinc.com), where charming shop owner Elias Tsiknis will tell you how to set the mood, Greek style. "In order to climb the ladder and go to the very top," he’ll explain, punctuating each word with a backhanded wave of his fingers, "you have to climb the steps one by one." The most important of these steps is taking a shot of ouzo, an anise-flavored liquor, which is the national drink of Greece and, according to Tsiknis, the world’s most potent love brew. But this is not just national pride speaking — it’s science, pure and simple: the anise flavor contains anethole, also known as a chemical precursor for paramethoxyamphetamine (PMA), a.k.a. ecstasy. While you’re there, take a moment to admire Tsiknis’ extensive collection of Aphrodite sculptures.

OYSTERS


Perhaps the most potent of all aphrodisiacs, oysters were the infallible recipe of Casanova, who famously seduced two women at once with this sensuous shellfish. Oysters are the world’s most concentrated natural source of zinc, the key ingredient to a healthy prostate and the production of sperm. Oysters come in various tastes and textures: if you like a clean, smooth flavor with a briny finish, try Evening Cove oysters; for a buttery texture with a sweet, slightly fruity flavor sample a Kumamoto; and for a sweet, fruity taste with a touch of watermelon and cantaloupe, try the mollusks from Point Reyes, our local oyster farm. Yabbies Coastal Kitchen (2237 Polk, SF. 415-474-4088, www.yabbiesrestaurant.com) serves these varieties, and many more.

SPANISH FLY


Remember "Brass Monkey," that Beastie Boys hit from Licensed to Ill: "Girl walked by, she gave me the eye / I reached in the locker, grabbed the Spanish Fly / I put it with the Monkey, mixed it in the cup / Went over to the girl, "Yo baby, what’s up?" What the Brooklyn boys’ lyrics refer to is a potentially deadly (and, in the U.S., illegal) aphrodisiac made from the ground-up bodies of tiny iridescent blister beetles. Although Spanish fly has a 5,000-year-old history as an aphrodisiac, both for humans and farm animals, it can cause permanent damage to the kidneys and genitals if taken in excess. Let the buyer beware!

ZZZS


Though it may seem counterintuitive, sleeping is one of the best aphrodisiacs around. Nordenstrom says if you’re not getting seven or eight hours of sleep nightly, it’s time to put aside the chocolate and oysters, and rekindle your passion for old Mr. Sandman.

More herbs and food to get you in the mood from Ann Sims on our SEX SF blog

>>More G-Spot: The Guardian Guide to love and lust

It’s hard to be a man

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By Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

Midnites for Maniacs programmer Ficks is in Utah checking out the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. Here’s what’s gotten his attention so far…

“We Live in Public” trailer

Paper Heart, directed by Nicholas Jasenovec
Early on in this semi-mock doc, the actor Michael Cera, who plays himself, responds to the overview of Paper Heart by saying, “Just what America needs, another quirky comedy.” Cera, who has reinstated the term “perfect comic timing” since he appeared as George Michael in Arrested Development , is yet again awkward and hilarious in this sweet but fairly clunky trek across America, which asks real couples how they met, reinacts them with paper cutouts a la Science of Sleep (2006), and if ponders the question if love truly exists. The film’s lead actress — Charlyne Yi, the stoner girl who hangs with all the dudes in Knocked Up (2007) — also co-scripted this sure-to-be crowd pleaser. If only certain scenes hadn’t felt so forced.

Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, directed by John Krasinski
Director Krasinski — better known as Jim on The Office — also adapted the screenplay from David Foster Wallace’s story. The tale follows Sara (Julianne Nicholson), a woman who’s been recently cheated on, as she interviews multiple subjects of the male gender about their honest fears, fantasies, and frustrations. Krasinski’s film pushes through its similarities to Paper Heart (getting to the bottom of love) by taking its “personal interviews” to impressive depths about the male psyche. It delivers some pretty powerful moments.

We Live in Public, directed by Ondi Timoner
Fascinatingly addictive, this follow up to Timoner’s cult classic Dig! (which won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize in 2004) follows the bi-polar exploits of Internet pioneer Josh Harris. This man predicted every single step of the internet and the jaw dropping footage of his “experiments” are here to prove it. In 1999 he created a quasi-cult community in the basement of New York, in which people were given pods to sleep in, free food, drugs, and all night raves while every move was being recorded and shared. Even now, the uncompromising footage has the power to warp the viewer into his Orwellian vision of the future. But wait — that’s not all: Harris then goes on to rig 32 motion-sensor cameras in his house, creating the first website to stream his and girlfriend’s every life moment. I can’t express enough how awesome this film is, or how horrifyingly revealing of where our own society has headed. You wanna talk about the film of Sundance ’09? Look no further.

Super Ego: Holy Bass Camp, lazer lady!

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I knew it. I knew it! This weekend is the first holiday weekend I’m gonna be in town for the past year — and I’m totally gonna blow my wad early and end up watching old episodes of Mad Men in bed, dutifully stoned. Why? Because Thursday night sees the launch of Daly City Records and ArtNowSF‘s ‘ new monthly Bass Camp at 111 Minna. And their bringing in all the big Montreal names in lazer bass, damn. I’m so lazer there.

basscamp09b.jpg

Freakin’ Megasoid, freakin’ Lunice, freakin’ Hovatron — and a little somethin’ I like to call Lazer Sword.

All that, PLUS Robot Koch and Bass Science — with way-too-cute residents Mochipet, Epcot, Quitter, Salva, and MC Buddy LeRoy. It’ll be the blaps, y’all …

I LOVE LAZER BASS

Bass Camp
Third Thursdays, 9pm, $10 advance
111 Minna, SF.
www.111minnagallery.com

Fashion forward

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› culture@sfbg.com

Looking at fashion designer Miranda Caroligne today, it’s hard to imagine she ever did anything other than sew and sell clothing. In addition to running her namesake boutique on 14th Street, she manages the co-op Trunk, peddles her wares at events across the country, and was asked to write Reconstructing Clothes for Dummies (For Dummies, 2007). Thanks to her gorgeous, whimsical, reconstructed styles, as well as her dedication to environmentalism and artistic community, she has become a well-reputed force in the SF indie fashion scene and beyond.

But she didn’t start that way — and the road to the present was neither easy nor direct.

Caroligne grew up in the woodland areas of Rhode Island with her mom, an elementary school teacher and brilliant seamstress, and her dad, a textile scientist. As a child, she spent most of her time hiking, exploring, or working on creative crafts with her mom, developing equal interest in both art and science. By high school, she was passionate about three very different subjects: writing, health care, and fashion. But when she got to the University of Rhode Island, she chose her major based on which jobs she thought would be available after she graduated. Health care won by a long shot. "And I was afraid of this thing called writer’s block," she jokes. Sewing remained a captivating pastime.

After graduating with a MS in physical therapy in 2000, Caroligne began working with children who had sensory system problems in Washington, DC. "Being young and having a job that relied on my physical strength — that time was psychologically stressful," she recalls.

Caroligne’s stress level hit the roof after a bicycling accident in 2003, which left her with a crushed nerve in her neck. Her physical strength had failed her, and she was without a job. It was a sign that it was time to turn her lifelong hobby, fashion design, into a career. With her short-term disability insurance and unemployment checks, she moved to Boston and found an art studio, where she spent nearly all her time at the sewing machine. "Sometimes when I don’t know what to do, I just do," she explains. "I’m not one to be idle." She spent so much time working at the studio that she decided to sublease her apartment, leaving her nowhere to sleep but on friends’ couches. After a few months of couch-surfing, she cashed her unemployment checks and moved across the country to pursue a career in fashion.

It was January 2005, and Caroligne lived in a closet in her friend’s apartment. Her only possessions were a disco ball, which hung from the ceiling next to the skylight, a sewing machine, and a few pieces of colorful fabric draped over a stretch canvas which served as sewing material by day and bedding by night. Soon, she found her dream store in the heart of the Mission District.

She opened the shop in November of that year. About the size of a large dorm room, the cluttered space is filled with radiant, one-of-a-kind garments that reflect many years of hard work. She stitches them with a beat-up machine that faces a window on the street, so she can smile and wave to people as they pass. Her wares are reconstructed garments (made from donated clothing that she dismantles and pieces back together in different ways), articles produced from original patterns, and offcut items (made from the leftover scraps she accumulates while working on patterned pieces).

And her reuse of materials is more than just style — it’s an outgrowth of the environmentalism she learned as a kid. Caroligne advocates sustainability and makes use of almost every shred of old fabric, no matter how big or small. "I have this philosophy of not having sizes," she says. "I alter everything to fit." Sometimes she lets her customers alter pieces with her, so inspired buyers can learn how to make clothing on their own. "Part of the reason the sewing machine’s out is to show people they can do it, too."

To share her philosophy, Caroligne agreed to write Reconstructing Clothes for Dummies in the fall of 2007, encouraging fellow fashionistas to reuse old materials. She was surprised to reach not only an earth-loving, crafty crowd but also a non-sewing, mainstream audience. People were motivated to salvage their materials, whether they made their own clothes or not. Now, her style is becoming so popular with typical shoppers that some conventional retailers have started "faking" reconstruction. But Caroligne says her authentic pieces are about reducing waste and avoiding conformity, not just about looking good.

Now, on a typical Friday afternoon at her boutique, as she sits at her old-fashioned sewing machine with a pile of white, ruffly fabric exploding out from under it, she waves playfully at a child strolling past the shop with his family. Another woman walks in and gives Caroligne a hug. "It’s less about fashion and more about meeting people, helping them get in touch with themselves," she says. She wants everyone to be able to express themselves by wearing clothes that reveal how they feel. While her designs are meant to be fashionable, they’re carefully crafted based on how they feel and move while wearing them. Her background in physical therapy helps her understand the way fabrics are supposed to flow with the body, as well as how light or heavy the materials should be. She tests most of her skirts and dresses for these characteristics, because she says the weight of a fabric can change the way someone walks in it, depending on his or her physical composition. "They don’t teach you that in fashion school," she says, noting that she’s glad she didn’t attend. "It’s rigid."

Most designers she knows went to fashion school, though, and have taken a more standard route: they’ve created clothing lines and sold them to national retailers. While this route is probably the easiest, Caroligne says she’ll never regret opening her neighborhood boutique and sewing her designs herself. "There’s a life that happens when hanging up a new piece," she says. Curiously, it’s the one people ooh and ahh over when entering the store, even though everything looks new to them when it’s their first time in. Caroligne gets new ideas when sewing one-of-a-kind articles, which she says wouldn’t happen if other people sewed the clothes for her.

This March, however, Caroligne and her sales rep plan to start taking orders for a nationally distributed clothing line — without abandoning her boutique. Her "adult contemporary" collection will comprise pieces she has crafted for her store and her fashion shows, which are usually fundraising events for groups such as the Black Rock Arts Foundation.

On top of everything, she runs a sustainable art-retail-fashion cooperative, Trunk, in Upper Haight. Formerly known as Pandora’s Trunk, the shop has been renovated inside and out since she and her business partner split last fall. Caroligne says the corporate structure and leadership has changed, and for the first time it feels like a true San Francisco co-op, where people encourage each other and each other’s art. "There’s a sense of community support in San Francisco," she says, thinking about the differences between the Bay Area and Boston. "People live better here." Now there’s more space for local designers in the store, including the San Francisco–born, world-renowned company Wildlife Works, whose proceeds benefit endangered species and help create jobs and schools in Kenya. Caroligne donates regularly to Wildlife Works, which gives her scrap fabric and clothing in exchange. She uses the leftovers for her reconstructed and offcut designs, noting that this swap is just another way she likes to support the community and reinforce its connectedness.

Years after accomplishing her goal of becoming a successful designer, she has only one piece of advice for others with a similar ambition: "Just do it." She remembers one of her college professors who’d had many different jobs in various fields, and back then she thought he was a failure. But now his story inspires her.

"There are different ways of looking at life: you can work to financially support the life you want to live, or you can figure out a way to make the thing you love to do a source of financial stability," she says. With a humble smile, she adds: "I think I’ve found success in that." *

MIRANDA CAROLIGNE

485 14th St., SF. (415) 355-1900, www.mirandacaroligne.com

TRUNK

544 Haight, SF. (415) 861-5310, www.myspace.com/trunksf

Pecha Kucha: PowerPoint sprints for artists

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By Susan White

06-18_Pecha Kucha - poster.jpg

Last month, an amalgamation of hipsters and art aficionados congregated at the Harlot Nightclub for a “hyperintellectual show-and-tell,” otherwise known as Pecha Kucha Night, a worldwide event created in Tokyo six years ago (and recently adapted for San Francisco Design Week).

Basically, Pecha Kucha (pronounced “pe-chak-cha” – Japanese for “chit chat”) is a function at which designers each have exactly six minutes and 40 seconds to present 20 slides of their work (giving them 20 seconds per slide). Having no control over the speed of the projector, speakers are forced to make their points quickly and effectively, moving on before the audience gets bored. Their work usually ranges from architecture to furniture – even the occasional science experiment. Anyone can sign up to speak in advance, and the events are usually free (with suggested donations).

This land was your land

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Anyone paying any kind of attention has a deep-gut feeling that things aren’t going well for Earth. No matter how fancy or technologically advanced we get, everything humans make and break is fashioned from the resources at hand — water, air, petroleum, minerals, soil and its nutrients, and plants and trees and their fruit. Your MacBook may look space age, but it didn’t fall from the sky. "Nearly everything you use every day is based on minerals mined somewhere, often leaving behind disfigured land and a toxic mess," Howard G. Wilshire, Jane E. Nielson, and Richard W. Hazlett write in The American West at Risk: Science, Myths, and Politics of Land Abuse and Recovery (Oxford University Press, 619 pages, $35)

"Mining is the prow of America’s consumer-propelled ship. Its whole purpose is to dig up resources for transformation to consumer goods," the authors go on to note, with the kicker that such resources are nonrenewable. "A three-bedroom, two-and-a-half bathroom house of about 2,000 square feet, with a two-car garage, central air conditioning, and a fireplace, contains more than a quarter-million pounds of mined metals and other minerals."

The American West at Risk explains the exact effects mining has on Western ecosystems — in other words, the other living things trying to survive alongside humans. Beginning with forests, the authors outline the history of logging and how the right to do it on public lands was weasled from a weak Environmental Protection Agency made even weaker over the last eight years. All professional geologists, the three authors draw upon science in their argument for preservation.

An EPA library in condensed form, The American West at Risk presents a coherent survey of forestry, agriculture, water use, outdoor recreation, road building, military operations, garbage disposal, and nuclear power. "Western US public lands, about 47 percent of the region, are this nation’s patrimony — the bulk of its remaining natural capital," the authors observe. In each of the book’s 13 chapters, they study a single major resource and its uses. The chapters are tidy and stand on their own, but read together, they reveal an abuse of public lands and resources for the benefit of a very few. They also reveal how government science has been warped to perpetuate myths — for example, the idea that grazing on rangelands doesn’t harm the soil, or that military testing shouldn’t have bothersome effects on downwind populations.

The conclusions reached by Wilshire, Nielson, and Hazlett aren’t all doom and gloom — solutions are included — but amid climate change, the authors deserve great credit for not mincing words. The American West at Risk is being marketed as a textbook, and although schools are one ideal realm for its ideas, they aren’t the only one. This book appeals to anyone with an interest in environmental issues, and is essential bedside reading for any environmentalist or activist. It should be read by all Westerners — and by anyone who cares about this great, vast, once bountiful planet, now on the brink of death.

HOWARD G. WILSHIRE, JANE E. NIELSON, AND RICHARD W. HAZLETT read from The American West at Risk. Thurs/8, 7 p.m. at Books Inc. Opera Plaza, 601 Van Ness, SF. (415) 776-1111, www.losingthewest.com

>>Read Amanda Witherell’s interview with the authors here

LIT: Authors and SFBG talk saving the earth

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by Amanda Witherell

amandawindbook.jpg

Yes, even careless placement of renewable energy is hurting the land — addressed in chapter five.
Photo courtesy of losingthewest.com

This week we reviewed The American West at Risk, a recently-published tome that details how ongoing environmental issues are destroying the general livability of Earth for all species, including humans. In short, this book shouldn’t just be on every wannabe Greenpeace activist’s nightstand. Each of the 13 chapters explore one subject in depth — forestry, mining, military operations, road building, to name a few — and balances science with politics and reality to sharpen the argument for preservation of natural resources.

We spoke with two of the authors, Howard G. Wilshire and Jane E. Nielson, who will be reading and discussing the book with co-author Richard Hazlett on Thursday, Jan. 8 at Books Inc, 601 Van Ness Ave.

SFBG: I’m curious why you wrote this book and who you feel you wrote it for.

Howard G. Wilshire: We wrote it because the three of us, all geologists, have a great deal of experience working on environmental issues in the West and we were concerned about it. We get a lot of inquiries from reporters and lawyers and others about specific issues and we figured that since we’re not going to be around forever we should write down our responses and make them available.
When we began the book we told Oxford University Press that we were writing it for nonscientists as well as for academic use, but they’re pretty fussy and decided they would market it only as an academic book. But we wrote it for people who have a problem in their own backyard and want to get some background information on how to respond to it.

Jane E. Nielson: Or for decision makers and environmental lawyers. Often they are not people trained in science and they may not know all the ramifications. Reporters often don’t know all the questions to ask when presented with some sort of a program that’s going to improve things or they have a hard time figuring out what the answers mean. These are the kinds of people who would call us, as well as people from a citizens group who have some kind of major problem coming up and want to know what they needed to think about and what they should be concerned about. This is really the reason we wrote the book. There’s a lot of expertise here and a lot of consideration of things that most people don’t think about.

Losing the West

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› amanda@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY Our society can’t continue functioning the way it does. Exploiting the natural abundance of resources in the western United States, without balancing the needs of nature, has lead to the myriad environmental problems outlined in The American West at Risk, a book recently penned by Bay Area–based geologists Richard W. Hazlett, Jane E. Nielson, and Howard G. Wilshire.

A thorough survey of environmental issues related to forestry, water, agriculture, mining, road building, outdoor recreation, waste disposal, military testing, nuclear energy, and warfare, the book was written from the perspectives of scientists, but told in such a way that the science makes the case for preservation by driving home the point that everything the human race depends on comes from nature. Ultimately, the authors stress that the solution is homegrown. "Americans have to start caring about the survival of small communities, their local towns, and their local resources."

We caught up with Nielson and Wilshire by phone to discuss the book in anticipation of their visit to San Francisco this week.

SFBG It often seems like saving the world becomes an emotional or moral stance and less of a scientific one — or that’s how it frequently gets framed by opponents.

JANE E. NIELSON That’s right, and for no reason. Economics have become more important. One of the things we’re trying to say is the environment is the basis for our economic well-being.

SFBG Do you think that if people more fully realize that resources aren’t infinite, thriftiness will become more of the American lifestyle?

JEN It would be very desirable for people to realize that more, to have it taught in schools. How much time we have left to do that, I don’t know. I feel that once people do get an appreciation for the fact that life is going to be leaner, that the soil is really important, things can change very rapidly.

HOWARD G. WILSHIRE My pessimism is borne of the fact that they will have to respond quickly because we are on the brink of serious problems. Climate change is a big one and coping with that — the plans that are being endorsed now and pushed now by politicians and businesspeople — are that we’re going to have to find alternatives to cheap oil to keep on doing what we’re doing.

SFBG In the book you reveal a pattern of public commons being used to benefit a minority, whether its subsidies for big growers, cheap grazing rights, water rights for a handful of a farmers …

HGW It’s across the board.

SFBG How do we break these patterns of privilege, because it’s so ingrained it seems like an institutional problem?

JEN I have to tell you this is something that just sort of grew on us as we wrote the book. We knew about various subsidies, but the immensity of it and the pervasive pattern really only became clear as we progressed through the book.

SFBG It’s interesting that not only is there a pattern of subsidies, but they’re for a very small percentage of people.

JEN The whole history of land ownership in this country was intended to support the small person. The Homestead Act was supposed to give land to individuals, but most people failed at homesteading and there was no provision built in to prevent land from being gobbled up by big landowners.

SFBG So how can we flip this? Some of it is local, but for a lot of it these laws are federal.

HGW We have to take money out of the election system so we can get people free of monetary interest promoting their offices to do something useful. There are people who have the insight and the knowledge to know that we have got to stop this bleeding of our resources through subsidies.

The three authors will be reading and discussing the book Thursday, Jan. 8 at Books Inc. Opera Plaza, 601 Van Ness Ave. The event begins at 7 p.m. More information can be found at losingthewest.com.

>>Read the full interview with the authors here

>>Read Amanda Witherell’s full review of the book here

Why?, Deerhunter, Chief Briggum land Sholi’s top slots of 2008

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dead science sml.jpg
Life force: Dead Science.

Another in a series of year-end picks from Bay Area musicians, writers, scene-makers, and music lovers.

MORE PICKS FROM SHOLI‘S PAYAM BAVAFA AND ERIC RUUD

– Dead Science, Villianaire (Constellation)
– Deerhoof, Offend Maggie (Kill Rock Stars)
– Bon Iver, For Emma, Forever Ago (Jagjaguwar)
– Chief Briggum, Ambiguous Garment (self-released)
– Buildings Breeding, LP2 (self-released)
– Deerhunter, Microcastle (Kranky)
– Why?, Alopecia (Anticon)
– Beach House, Devotion (Carpark)
– Fennesz, Black Sea (Touch)
– Matmos, Supreme Balloon (Matador)
– Dodos, Visitor (French Kiss)
– What’s Up, Content Imagination (Obey Your Brain)
– Vampire Weekend, Vampire Weekend (XL)
– Love Is Chemicals, Song of the Summer Youth Brigade (Near Earth Objects)

New news, old year

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Readers:

It’s been a crappy but interesting year in sex news, which, when you really think about it, could describe just about any year you care to look at. One of these stories is probably my favorite sex/science news ever, at least since we found out that female ejaculate comes from the bladder, not the tiny Skene’s glands along the urethra. Oh, and there was the study that showed that that men who identified as bisexual were not actually aroused by images of men having sex, and the correlation of lesbianism with finger-length ratios…

My first story is actually an old one (most of the datelines for it on the Web are from 2003), but it did just land on my desk again, so I thought I’d take this opportunity to report that performing fellatio does not reduce the risk of breast cancer by up to 40 percent in women who swallow at least twice a week. As Snopes.com points out, the presence of experts such as "Dr. Len Lictopeen" on the "CNN Health" page that makes the rounds ought to serve as a hint that the page was spoofed. Sorry, fellas.

So what else do we have? Medscape published a rundown of penis news titled "Penile Size and Penile Enlargement Surgery: A Review," which was mostly unstartling (urologists think surgeons should have a good reason before performing penis enlargement procedures, many men are dissatisfied with the results, etc.), but my favorite take-away was this one: after linear regression analysis, there was no statistical correlation between stretched penile length and shoe size. So now you know.

New Scientist published an article I wish I’d read back when I was answering phones at San Francisco Sex information, where questions about sex, calories, and weight loss (or gain, in the case of fellatio-performers who worried about calorie content) were common. "Nope, sorry," I’d assure them, "You’re not going to lose weight that way (300 calories an hour is an optimistic but common estimate), but it’s good for your general health, so off you go." But now it appears that prolactin, the hormone that not only induces lactation but promotes maternal feelings and rises after orgasms achieved during intercourse — although (apparently) not through other acts — may also play a role in maternal and paternal weight gain. And since prolactin levels rise after sex, some researchers are investigating the obvious conclusion: sex makes you fat. And while they don’t ask this question, I will: is "fat and happy" really such a bad thing, given the alternative?

Meanwhile, there actually is evidence that sex, especially morning sex, really is good for what ails you. Among many other and better-known benefits, it has been shown to raise levels of Immunoglobulin A,(IgA), the microbe-slaying antibody, and thus might help you fight infections.

All of this is well and good, but I’ve been remiss in not reporting sooner the headline that really captured my attention: "G-Spot Caught on Ultrasound! Elusive Organ’s Existence No Longer In Question!"

Not that I questioned it. I was (and still am) continually irritated, however, by the constant references in the media to the G-spot’s possible apocryphal-ocity. While merely insisting that something is there cannot make it so (I am, for instance, still an atheist), this denial of the lived and reported experience of millions of women (and many of their partners) is and was uniquely galling. But now we have this story, reported as a bit of a yay/boo/yay by our friend, New Scientist:

Yay: Emmanuele Jannini at the University of L’Aquila in Italy discovered clear anatomical differences between women who claim to have vaginal orgasms — triggered by stimulation of the front vaginal wall without any simultaneous stimulation of the clitoris — and those who don’t.

Boo: Apparently, the key is that women who orgasm during penetrative sex have a thicker area of tissue in the region between the vagina and urethra, meaning that a simple scan could separate the lucky "haves" from the "have-nots."

Yay: Even better, Jannini now has evidence that women who have this thicker tissue can be "taught" to have vaginal orgasms. Ultrasound scans on 30 women uncovered G-spots in just eight of them and when these women were asked if they had vaginal orgasms during sex, only five of them said yes. However, when the remaining three were shown their G-spots on the scan and given advice on how to stimulate it, two of them subsequently "discovered" the joy of vaginal orgasms. "This demonstrated, although in a small sample, the use of [vaginal ultrasound] in teaching the vaginal orgasm," Jannini says.

I knew it! I’ve been teaching for years and years that internal sensitivity is, or at least can be, a learned response. I don’t expect that ultrasound, which is expensive and literally invasive — if also harmless and painless — is going to become part of Everywoman’s sexual fulfillment tool-kit, but how cheering is it to have proof at last? Good news in a bad year, right?

Love,

Andrea

Andrea is teaching Sex After Parenthood at Day One Center (www.dayonecenter.com), Recess (info@recessurbanrecreation.com), and privately. Contact her at andrea@altsexcolumn.com for more info.

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