Mary Ann Moments
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 ...

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