Neptune Landing

Courage, loyalty, guardianship. These are but three attributes that dogs have enjoyed in many societies and throughout mythology. As birth rates plummet in 21st century America, dogs are becoming proxy children, especially in cities where apartment space can be precious. San Francisco leads the pack with these new demographics (dogographics?). According to a 2006 National Geographic article , there are 110,000 dogs safely folded into society here, one for every seven Golden Gate denizens. Not surprisingly, expendable income follows the wagging tail. As a professional dogwalker, I am one of the hundreds of new nannies that have taken over public parks and sundry sidewalks. We are the new working class of family helpers. Power dynamics have been thrown upside down as these new dogs expect to be spoiled. It is we humans now who do the heavy lifting for our loved ones. There are still breeds and individual dogs who like to fulfill their duties, (e.g. alerting the family of st

For Christmas, I had pulled off a gift-giving victory, finding and purchasing the first six "Tales of the City" novels on-line with nary a scribble in the margins. Mauricio was thrilled. Armistead Maupin, I assured him, provides the only introduction to local, literary allusions and his writing is marvelous and accessible for non-native English speakers. His protagonist is Mary Ann Singleton, a plucky gal from Cleveland, Ohio who becomes mesmerized by Baghdad-by-the-Bay and moves there suddenly. Throughout the series, she has these "Mary Ann Moments;" San Francisco situations that shatter her sense of manners, reality and expectations. Mary Ann is tested, annoyed, delighted, creeped out and horrified. She finds a world that cannot be contained in any neat box and it frustrates her midlander sense of decorum. Likewise, I've had a strange, San Francisco week in which I quoted the Joker with "This town needs an enema." In no particular order, the