Bibs & bobs.

There was a string quartet busking in the Montgomery station this morning. They were playing "La Bamba". This had me laughing all the way up the escalator to street level. Sometimes I love this city.

Less laugh-inducing was the 4.7 quake near Gilroy this morning. Torgi woke up funkyplaid, but I slept right through it. Did anyone else feel it? If you did, report it to the USGS - they collect that data to study how far earthquake waves move.

I am working the EPA Spill Phone this morning. Usually, this is a very boring duty but during the World Cup it's pretty cool because there are two televisions in the Spill Phone Center. One is tuned to CNN, one to Telemundo. England v. Trinidad this morning. One of the EPA folks told me that a Trinidadian distillery has offered the team's players an extra incentive - if they beat England, each one of them will win a barrel of rum.

I miss la chica something fierce.

In praise of city living.

Earlier this afternoon, I was walking through the FiDi from EPA to URS. All around me, there were people of different nationalities & races, carrying on conversations in different languages. I heard the bells of the Catholic church ring out as I passed by a poster for a Buddhist meditation class. Tantalizing odors emerged onto the streets from restaurants selling the cuisines of many cultures. Office workers who had stepped outside for lunch traded idle banter with construction workers taking a coffee break. The bus rumbled down Howard Street, carrying men & women, queers & straights, parents & children, all moving together through the interlacing patterns of their daily activities.

It occurred to me that all of this co-existence was a complete refutation of the central premise of many kinds of separatists: that different people can't get along. People of different religions can't get along: WRONG. People of different races can't get along: WRONG. People of different cultural backgrounds, different sexual orientations, different family structures, different social classes, can't get along: all completely wrong. Look at any major city & you can see the counterexample – people from all kinds of backgrounds, sharing some portion of their public lives. And even better than that, they aren't just tolerating each other – they're enjoying the experience of sharing diversity. It's part of what brings people into cities, isn't it?

This is not to say that cities are perfect. There are many problems: economic inequities, discrimination in many forms, environmental impacts, just to name a few. But today I was struck by one of the greatest parts of urban life, & reminded yet again of how much I love it.