Fun With The Locals

Here in Marin County a news sheet called the Pacific Sun ran a story on a local opera composer, one Ron MacFarland. Seems MacFarland’s last work was based on the Donner Party. Well, Mac Farland shopped his creation to all the likely candidates - the JC College of Marin, the upscale Dominican College, all the elite of education. All he got was rejection. The Sun’s writer Jason Walsh marvels at what happened next. "Oddly enough," he writes (then with regrettable diction continues), "the relatively conservative-leaning students at Chico State were known for their openness to modern opera and after digesting the idea of a Donner Party opus, the university agreed to stage the world premier."

"Oddly enough"?! This is not only profiling, it reflects a profound lack of original scholarship on the part of Walsh. But rare? Not by a long shot.

We have been the target of similar profiling, a friend from the left wondering how in the world we could have such an interest in nature, animals, how we could approach the world in a gentle way, and yet be a conservative? What?

Naive in the case of Walsh? Probably. As to our friend, well......

Let’s return again to Marin County and its San Geronimo Valley, a area simply infested with lefties, and then to its Lagunitas Creek, were there has been a 10- fold decline in the salmon population, past 30 years. Seems the county proposes the creation of a 35 ft no-build zone between the creek and homes nearby with the welfare of one of nature’s most beautiful creatures in mind. The so-called Salmon Enhancement Plan is simply a series of voluntary recommendations for locals to contribute to restore habitat for migrating fish. The locals, most all rabid Democrats and all self-proclaimed environmentalists, will have none of it, fearing it may become law, and prevent them from paving driveways, repairing docks, enlarging their homes, and otherwise seeing to their self interest. They’re outraged!

Phonies? Definitely.

Or again to Marin - an acquaintance, a major lefty who pumps water all summer out of a creek which is home to endangered salmon and steelhead. Now that doesn’t seem a fit to the average guy. But we’re likely missing something. He does it legally (grand fathered) or he would have long ago begun taking his meals through a slot. The individual and creek will remain unnamed in the interest of retaining my health.

Can we catagorize this guy? No, better not, he’s a friend. But it’s clear why he is a card carrying member of the chattering class.

Or again to blatant profiling, and again to San Anselmo; this time to the long-time companion of a well known song writer / performer; he, a one-time member of the Kingston Trio, then on to his own creations. I spent some time this week with Buffy in her garden, reminiscing about the songs and the man - John Stewart. He was a major lefty but a great artist. He worked with Bob Kennedy and was there when he died.. We never judged him; we never profiled him. Not so for the left. Buffy marveled as we walked through her garden, that "even Bob Bennet loved John’s stuff," as if to say, this is an amazing achievement for neanderthals.

All the oddities of behavior noted above, all from the local left, reflect the following: 1) a lack of scholarship, 2) a vulnerability to group-thought and the accompanying lack of original insight, 3) the use of words as ornaments, tokens, and finally 4) a demonstrated vacuity of follow through or commitment to the spoken word, that which most of us associate with our pronouncements or positions.

Robert Craven