Labor/Labour Day - 2004

This will begin in earnest, the fall campaign. It has been bad enough in recent weeks with all the mudslinging, lies, and distortions from the Republican camp, but it can only get worse now. One thing I think I will do is to read Pat Buchanan's new book on what has gone wrong in the Republican party. I saw a portion of an interview with him on the Internet and he makes sense and whets my appetite for more information.

Sitting here at the computer keyboard I am labor/labouring over what to write, if anything. Sure, the SF heat waves continues (two days in a row in the nineties) but it looks as if it will moderate some today. Actually, September and October are traditionally the warmest two months of the year and as Herb Caen used to like to point out, it would warm up after the tourists left on this holiday weekend. I could get into the reasons for this phenomenon but I won't although it involves the positioning of the perennial "Pacific High" and more equal barometric pressure between the coastline and the inland California valleys. Enough said on that for now.

Florida is still having to deal with Frances and if everything goes wrong they might have to deal with Ivan in the coming weeks. When I was a child and hurricanes always carried female names, there was a bad joke about why they were all named after women. The answer to the question as to why was because they are hurricanes and not himacanes. (That works better verbally than it does in print.)

The San Francisco Opera and Symphony open their respective seasons this week so fall has arrived along with the warm weather which is a problem in the Opera House which does not have air-conditioning unless you like the hot air-con of that place. Also coming up soon are the Folsom Street and the Castro Street fairs. Then Halloween falls on a Sunday this year. What a way to end the weekend.