–First, I’d like to recognize a letter in the arts section of the San Francisco Chronicle. The missive from sonemone named Neil Gelineau complains in a tone of rising pique about the rudeness of play-goers and the cramped seating in the city’s theaters. Then he concludes:
“San Francisco deserves better theaters in better locations. The Golden Gate Theatre is in the Tenderloin, and it disgusts me to walk the block or two into and out of the show with the lowest forms of human life I have ever witnessed.”
Wow.
–Second, through happenstance I just found out that if you plug the term life inspirations into Google — just those two words, in that order, with no quote marks — an entry on Infospigot comes up Number 5 of 699,000 entries. It’s titled “Real True-to-Life Inspirations … ,” and until I looked at it, I had no recollection of the life-affirming words I had offered to help light our sad, despairing world. Now that I’ve read the item, I’m kind of choked up.
While I would have a hard time arguing with Neil about the level of fun involved in walking that part of the Tenderloin at night, I think if those are “the lowest forms of humanity” he has seen he hasn’t been getting out much lately. With war and other attrocities in the world we are not in short supply of even lower forms.