Far from the madding crowd
I remember in the early 90’s before the dot.com bubble took off and the depressed economy had finally caught up to San Francisco, a man who walked out of the Embarcadero Building and stood on the crowded corner of Market with everyone pouring out of the building, he stopped and put his hands to his face and began sobbing – sobbing so hard his body shook. I’ll never forget that image. It haunts me to this day.
Another image that keeps replaying is more recent, and not as tragic, was three young guys standing beside one of the food booths at Jazz Fest on Sunday. Two were not wearing shirts and were very fit and handsome, the other was much heavier and had a nice smile. One of the tall, slim ones dropped an empty bottle on the ground deliberately as if the world were his trash can. I flinched. The guy with the nice smile waited a moment then reached down and grabbed the bottle and began walking to the trash can. The handsome guy said, “Where are you going?” The smiling guy said, “I’m just going to put this in the trash.” I took the empty bottle from him and said I’d do it as I was walking that way. It reminded me of something my mother always told me, “Beauty is as Beauty does.”