I wish life could be tweedish magazines

[Flipping thru a couple-of-months-old issue of fluffy, glossy San Francisco magazine (heir of the former (relatively literate) Focus, which my parents used to get as members of KQED, our local PBS affiliate), my eye lands on a political item rendered moot by Bill Simon's come-from-behind defeat of Richard Riordan in the Republican gubernatorial primary. A glaring error: "...it's been a century since a sitting governor has lost a general election."]

[Hello, I know I wasn't alive yet either, but you'd think a political writer (even for San Francisco) would know about Ronald Reagan besting Pat Brown in 1966, especially when that ugly victory might be seen as the start of the conservative backlash against the social movements of the 60s that went national two years later with Nixon over Humphrey, and with which we are still living today. I've noticed in a lot of writing in Bay Area periodicals a distinct lack of knowledge of local history. Can it still be that everyone here is from everywhere else?]

[Speaking of glossy magazines (and my obsession with celebrity sightings from the last entry), Violet took me to see Lillian Ross, essayist and interviewer extraordinaire of the New Yorker, be interviewed at Herbst Theatre a couple of nights ago. Fascinating woman, and Robin Williams (profiled, evidently, by the sharp octogenarian not long ago) was sitting two rows in front of us. I don't read the New Yorker on any regular basis, but I think it may be time to start. V. and I had to smile when question time began, and the tweedy, reedy audience members started all their questions for this other Miss Ross with "I'm a writer, or I'm trying to be..." Ah, we're all frustrated storytellers, aren't we?]

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