French Ladies: How My Sister And I Stopped Fighting By Becoming Foreign Women

This appeared as "Sibling Rivalry" at AOL's MyDaily/HUFFPOST WOMEN. +++

"Whoever gets a D in math has to sit in back."

That's how I'd call shotgun when it was time to squeeze our teenage bodies into the family's tiny Honda.

My younger sister Monika didn't appeal to my mother at the wheel. This cruel, impromptu rule was imposed by a straight-A sibling, and grades were everything in our California household.

She'd trundle into the backseat, probably hating life.

Our oldest sister, whom we called the "Queen of Mean," was away at college but present in spirit.

Family films show that sister pinching me, a swaddled newborn. Then the 2-year-old beams when she notices the cameraman.

In another reel, her golden curls flying in the wind, she's pushing me -- a pigeon-toed toddler -- off the back of her moving tricycle.

We've got no babyhood footage of me doing that kind of thing to Monika, 15 months younger. Bad behavior would become apparent later, during years of being pitted against each other in academics, sports, music.

Maybe our parents encouraged the fractiousness as a parenting technique.

We three kids must have been more manageable as rivals and informers, rather than allies and colluders.

By school age, we were experts in our household's reward and punishment system based on my father's experience in the Army. Misbehavior led to grunt chores like scrubbing bathroom tile grout with a toothbrush.

Accomplishments won us R 'n' R passes to slumber parties.

We sisters provoked each other for extra privileges. "Look, Mom, I'm being good and she's not."

Eventually we'd harass each other for pure sport.

"That shirt makes your teeth look yellow," Monika would happen to notice as I headed out the door for a junior high dance.

The moment was a far cry from our brown-haired toddler years, when Monika and I adored each other. Back then, our favorite pastime was playing a game we called "French Lady."

A cosmopolitan fantasy of drinking tea from a porcelain set, old lady handbags swinging on our forearms, we were two preschoolers speaking in French accents. Continental ladies-of-leisure must have been quite a stretch in late 1960s Berkeley, a town known for hippies and beatniks.

In college, Monika and I struggled to rekindle our "French Lady" rapport. Tentative, well-meaning contact was always a hair's breadth from implosion.

Visiting her at school in San Diego, I offered her a new hairstyle. I wanted to try a razor technique I witnessed as a model for a European salon.

I was not a stylist, and the only tool she had was a Daisy razor. Monika decided to trust me anyway. Having girlie fun, we disregarded the probability of disaster.

I pulled out a back curl and scratched at it with the pink plastic razor. A few strands caught and held on the narrow blade.

I increased the pressure and suddenly the entire lock gave way. The razor plunged to her scalp.

"What was that?" Monika reached up to feel the new concavity.

"It's -- nothing," was all I could say, overcome by a sudden fit of giggles.

I wanted to keep going, to fix it. But she was already across the room rooting in the dresser for a hand mirror.

"I'm dropping you at the bus station right now," she screeched. "I want you out of my sight!"

A 500-mile bus ride back to my parents, a truncated vacation with my sister. No.

But what were my options? I didn't know anyone in San Diego.

Except my older sister. She hardly talked to me.

The wounded creature in front of me had invited me in. If I wanted to stay, I'd need to change the drift of the afternoon -- and the entire course of our sisterhood.

Imagining what my friends wanted to hear from siblings who tortured them, I started: "I didn't mean to ruin your hair. I care about you."

The words sounded so formal and undefended. Unlike me.

"I want you to be happy," I heard myself explaining.

She stopped screaming. This wasn't just about the bad hair cut.

"I love you, and I'm sorry," I finally squeezed out, a surprise sob in my throat.

To admit how much I felt for this brown-eyed girl in a Hawaiian shirt put me in a sad, vulnerable place.

We stood looking at each other from opposite sides of her cinder block dorm room. Tears started to roll down our cheeks.

Monika came in for a hug, whispering into my ear, "I love you too."

From that day on, we relied on each other as sounding-boards for shared anxieties and revelations. We began to appreciate our kinship -- and our kindredship.

Later, I was living 9,000 miles away when Monika needed surgery. She wanted me to take care of her. Arranging a medical power of attorney, she gave me the right to have her unplugged if something went awry.

That's when it hit me. My baby sister now trusted me enough to put her life in my hands. Beyond accident of birth, we chose each other.

The month I attended her pre-op appointments, shopped and cleaned for her was the best time we'd ever spent together.

She was a grounding family presence at my wedding, and soon I was able to return the favor.

Monika's house burned down. Returning to a charred pile of rubble, she wasn't able to function. I was her first call and we puzzled through the devastation with the same analytical skills I once used to banish her to the backseat.

I was thrilled when she claimed to friends, "I borrowed my sister's brain to start rebuilding my life."

Socializing in genteel situations is still one of our favorite things, dressing up and affecting our best sensibilities. Sometimes we don't bother to dress up, or drink anything. When we get together, what's important is that we bring our best selves.

Expat Images: Unrecognizable Vs. Iconic

On my first serious expat stint, Southeast Asia in the ‘90s, I achieved a state of photographic oblivion. When I set out from Los Angeles I was already solidly unemployed, unproductive, and unmotivated. I had a capricious romance to see me through.

In Asia, life losses piled up: heirlooms ransacked at the container yard, the cruel theft of a puppy, the unfathomable demise of my best friend.

I did not write about any of these things. Too much shock, no support. Turns out capricious romance isn’t the best fallback in a crisis.

LANGUAGE AND CULTURAL BARRIERS PREVENTED ME FROM BONDING WITH THE CHINESE, MALAYS, TAMILS AND THAIS AROUND ME. My reactions were miscalibrated: I laughed when introduced to a person with the name of a celebrated American boxer -- a common moniker in Malaysia -- and took offense at the quickly-retracted handshake of a traditional Malay greeting. I expected dinner party banter at gatherings that instead seemed to focus on the scarfing of food in silence.

Soon enough I was as unrecognizable as my new world.

My own body was erasing me. A spongy, knee-less Southern Italian genetic inheritance asserted itself with the help of a greasy local diet while my hair frizzed mercilessly in the tropical air.

Friends who knew me during cosmopolitan past lives in New York, California, and Italy wouldn’t identify me as the 30-pounds heavier creature with the ill-fitting clothes and unschooled haircut photographed in jungles and palaces.

Uprooted from my milieu, in a harsh climate and surrounded by perpetual strangers, I was desperate to locate comfort whatever the cost.

My Asia photographs are stowed, an expat adventure distressing to recall, impossible to frame. Yet, scraping bottom (especially on the far side of the world) has a benefit. It’s easy to see which way is up.

My 12-time zone couch surf back to New York was like a Phoenix’s ascent from the ashes

RECENTLY I'VE BEEN PICTURED MONSTROUS AGAIN. Breathe easy: happily married, in possession of a hard won sense of self. This particular snapshot of expat life is a mantle piece pride. There I am in 2005 commandeering the lens, the microphone, the printing press in Istanbul as Turkish newspapers and television discuss my expat literature collection by foreign women about their lives in modern Turkey. Tales not universally known, many writers never before published. All of them minority voices in a Muslim nation with a reputation for censorship.

The celebrity-studded book launch is a blur, except for my unauthorly leather pants and shiny rock star coiffure -- those are in fine focus in my mind’s eye! I haven’t often been so polished before or since, nor managed to squeeze into the lambskin trousers, but no matter.

As a coiner of the concept of the Expat Harem virtual community -- feminine storytellers making sense of life’s evolutions through the filter of another culture -- in a flash I became iconic.

A positive image of an expat to others, and to myself.

THE FLEETING, PICTURESQUE MOMENT CAPTURES AN ENDURING TRUTH ABOUT MY EXPATRIATISM. In a wide world of strangers I’ve finally found my perpetual peers, and a theoretical home for both my literary career and my life abroad.

Now I have a way to nurture and sustain my most valuable expatriate possession -- my sense of self -- no matter where I am, or what heights or depths I face.

What image captures you at your most unrecognizable  -- and your most iconic? What was happening in your life in that moment? +++++ This post originally appeared in Amanda van Mulligen's blogseries "Expat Images"

Spot That Paradox: Open-Minded Misapprehensions And Other Global Values

Phew, just under the wire -- or there'd be no such thing as the May newsletter. Still tweaking what's to come. This first issue we're pleased to feature a reader query, some of the latest content on the site, a new experiential magazine for culturati, and a special offer for entrepreneurs who want to ramp up their professionalism on the world's widest web.

+++++ YOUR THOUGHTS

A reader in California sent us this question: What are global values?

Tricky! ...if they exist, they'd be the binds of a global community. Let us know how you'd answer him.

+++++ AT expat+HAREM

This discussion about Russian customer service and its complex roots in culture, politics and religion shows it's difficult to agree on something that seems pretty basic: how to treat another human being during a transaction.

+++++ AROUND THE WORLD & AROUND THE WEB

In a recent issue of AFAR, a brand new experiential travel magazine "for Americans who aren't part of the close-minded crowd", two articles admit some open-minded misapprehensions. One writer thinks the Inuit in Canada's High Arctic will be as worried as San Franciscans are about global warming, while another discovers 20 years of trying to fix a Filipino rice-farmer's life has only changed the comfort level of his own privileged birthright.

+++++ SPECIAL OFFER: [expired] Zero to Sixty While Keepin' It Real

JOIN THIRD TRIBE The web's a natural place for global citizens like us to test and actualize our ideas, build community, and even create an unbounded livelihood.

Are you looking for a way to raise the professional level of your online presence? Third Tribe has been getting our online derriere into gear since it opened three months ago. Our newsletter wouldn't have been born this decade if it weren't for a Third Tribe seminar telling us exactly how to do it, and why it's important. (They'd be freaked to hear I'm sending it out during a long holiday weekend. See, lots to learn.)

The Twinge Of Heritage: Ghostly Urges Of A Post-Immigration Life

Since the Ottoman royal harems were filled with women from the Mediterranean and the Baltic -- Italian families even casting their daughters on the Adriatic to be picked up by the sultan's sailors -- my Turkish husband jokes he finally brought me back to Istanbul where I belong. I don’t know, anything's possible. The Turks were also laying seige to Eastern Europe and my Lithuanian family name, echoing a town and river on today’s Belarus border, sounds a lot like the imperial Turkish bloodline of Osman.

For New World types like me the mysteries of our extended lineage often crop up as synchronicity. Wanderlust. Quirks of taste, like ghost urges from genes and culture long ago severed.

Why does this Northern California girl raised on turkey burgers crave the beet soup borscht? When I feel kinship with my Ukrainian, Estonian, Jewish, Italian and Greek friends, what do their wide brows or brown eyes, their stoicism or talkative personality, remind me of? Do they mirror the mix that is me?

You could call me a fourth generation immigrant. My parents and their parents and their parents before them each left their homes in search of safety and opportunity. Moving to Europe in 2003, I completed what we know of my family’s loop. When I slather Aegean olive oil on a spicy bed of wild arugula, I’m enjoying a harvest like a distant Italian ancestor must have -- yet one my closer relatives did not, as my grandmother served Spam in Chicago and my mother laid tofu taco salad on the table in Berkeley.

What ethnic or regional mystery reverberates in you? +++ I remember meeting a blueblood American at a Thanksgiving dinner in Bedford Hills NY and within a minute he had already inquired where my people were from and we’d established that I had only a general idea. As a Californian, a person from a state of reinvention, I remember thinking it was an odd thing to get hung up about. For him, it was a way to know who he was dealing with.

I was just talking with a friend on Twitter about these ethnic stirrings…for many of us it seems nationalism (especially for melting pot nations like America) has been a way to calm those feelings by lumping us together with others who happen to share passports or places of birth — but ultimately it’s superficial to who we are.

Is That A Pain Cry? What We Want To Hear About Death

I don’t see death every day, but I hear it. From where I sit, in my home office overlooking a little Bosphorus bay, the day is punctuated by recess at a large school below. Sometimes through the din I think I hear a high-pitched pain cry echoing in the valley. An intermittent wail. Out on the balcony I listen, some primitive hackle raised. The source: the government hospital on the waterfront. Not a patient. Someone realizing a loved life is over.

I caught a grief panel live-webcasted from The Women’s Conference 2009, America’s foremost forum for women as architects of change. California’s First Lady Maria Shriver -- whose mother and uncle died recently -- and other high profile grieving women talked in raw terms about love and loss. Tremulous voices....courageous for getting on stage in front of an audience of 25,000 for what is usually a private conversation.

Buttoned-down American culture is “grief-illiterate”, they agreed, one woman appreciating the Middle Eastern tradition of ululating which she saw as stress relief. Celebrity means they mourn in the public eye.  Shriver’s iconic clan has had a lion’s share of public bereavement -- it’s practically the Kennedy family culture -- yet she counted it as a benefit: people treated her gently, strangers transformed into supporters.

Many of us grieve in private, our mourning unnoticed outside of networks of family and friends.

Restricting who we talk to about it can cut us off from people unafraid to hear about death, perhaps those even able to console us.

I know when my best friend died -- 15 years ago -- I was on the opposite side of the planet from everyone who knew me, and her, which muffled my pain cry and made the isolation I felt even more acute.

What do you hear about death? What do you want to hear? What do you share?

Interviewed By Istanbullum Magazine

When did you move to Istanbul? What is the first memory you have about Istanbul? AA: My husband and I moved in 2003 and stayed in Ulus with my brother-in-law for a few months, so my impressions from those days are of the sun setting over the Topkapi Palace far in the distance as the family ate barbequed lamb chops on the balcony, an assembly line of kuzu izgara. Sprinkling dried marjoram and oregano on the chops. But my first memories started when I visited in 2000 ( I felt ages of winter chill emanating from AyaSofya’s old stones as I gazed up at the Byzantine mosaics). Then when I married in Istanbul the balmy summer of 2001, at Esma Sultan in Ortakoy, the memories punctuated by the flashbulbs of a glitzy Turkish wedding. The overall memory of Istanbul? A lot of kisses, for everyone, coming and going, every day, every night.

What does Istanbul mean to you? 

AA: Since I have a degree in Classical Greek, Roman and Near Eastern Archaeology,  Istanbul’s historical significance as the center of the ancient civilized world is never far from my consciousness. It’s a place of power and energy and ideas, and has been for centuries. There is no mistaking that this is an important place on the globe.  But as a New World woman from cutting edge California, I also love that with its heavy history it’s not musty and dead like a forgotten museum. I can appreciate its new layers of lives and dreams, and find modern day Istanbul to have more than its share of fabulous places, people and events.

Which part of the city do you live in? How do you like it?

AA: I lived in bohemian Cihangir for four years and loved my scenic view of the Bosphorus overlooking Kabatas ferry terminal. Perched on the cliff the view had all the energy of a transportation hub but at the same time was completely serene – and quiet, if you don’t count the taxicabs honking at all hours of the night! The proximity to Taksim and Istiklal was wonderful, and with the new tramway and metro extension, it really felt like the center of the world! My husband couldn’t take the commute to his Maslak office though so we just moved to Istinye, where we have a much more intimate view of the bay with its teal-colored water. I’m liking all the hillsides covered in wildflowers. But I’ll miss the cafes of Cihangir, like Miss Pizza, and Savoy Pastanesi for simit toast on Sundays and of course in a neighborhood so full of feisty street cats, the great veterinarians. I adopted my cat Bunny from Kazanci Sokagi, so where ever I go I’ll always have a bit of Cihangir in my heart, and in my home.

How does Istanbul look like from U.S.? Are there any misconceptions about the city?

AA: Physically I think the general image of Istanbul does not include so much water, waterways, vistas of water. The hills are also a surprise to many people.  It’s hard to conceive of a metropolis made of so many small villages, how Istanbul can go on for miles and still be Istanbul, even if each kilometer is like a new world.

Do you have any favorite spots in the city?

AA: My favorites are the ones I haven’t been to yet! They exist in my dream of Istanbul. There are so many places I yearn to go. Like the Ilhamur Kosku in Muradiye, the Beykoz pavilion, and Beylerbeyi Palace. The Horhor market in Eyup with its Levantine antiques. A strange restaurant in Gunesli specializing in huge platters of chicken wings.  Things you hear about, things you see from a distance, things you have to find a special time to do. The problem is more time I live in Istanbul, the longer my list grows.

Some of the stories take place in Istanbul in the book “Tales from the Expat Harem”. Is Istanbul a good setting for works of literature?

AA: I think so, (and for film too! Why aren’t there more films set in Istanbul?)  The Expat Harem tales set in Istanbul show that the city offers a colorful and diverse backdrop for personal histories, and adds true depth to the narrator’s every day life. When a young Guatemalan woman recognizes two hatun speaking Ladino on a Mecediyekoy bus, she feels pride in her Spanish linguistic connection -- and at the same time she acknowledges the chain of history that brought this medieval language to Istanbul.  What echoes in that moment is that the Guatemalan came to Istanbul through her own chain of history…

 What does Istanbul need? How would it be better?

AA: A more extensive Metro network, servicing coastal spots like Beskitas, Ortakoy and Bebek. Imagine how that would alleviate street traffic!

 What are your future writing projects? Is Istanbul somehow in them?

AA: Istanbul absolutely will play a role in many of my upcoming cultural essays, in fact the title of my travel memoir in progress is “Berkeley to Byzantium: The Reorientation of a West Coast Adventuress”. It’s about the physical (and metaphysical!) journey from my utopian hometown in California, around the world through classical Italy and the media worlds of New York and Hollywood, to the plantations and palaces of South East Asia, finally ending up in Istanbul. The challenge is to fully explain how my life has culminated in this incredibly meaningful place. Another challenge is to stay home and write when Istanbul beckons!

 What do you think about Istanbul being the “European Culture Capital for 2010”?

AA: It’s about time! It seems to me that Istanbul makes good use of its breathtaking monuments and historic settings for cultural activities (like concerts at Rumeli Hisari and the Aya Irini, and exhibits at the Darphane and Tophane-i Amire, and receptions at Feriye and Dolmabahce), and the yearlong festival will be a perfect opportunity to show off  to the world the city’s priceless heritage, and the life that the people of Istanbul inject into these wondrous spots.

How is the expat life in Istanbul? Is Istanbul an easy city for expat living? 

AA: There are tons of options for expatriates in Istanbul, social and business clubs and general communities, and lots of support networks and foreign language media. I’ve been an expat in Rome and Kuala Lumpur where I learned some expat survival techniques and put them into practice as soon as I arrived here.  I think Jennifer Gokmen would agree that making the anthology helped make sense of our own lives in Turkey as foreigners -- the Expat Harem is an apt metaphor for us.  The title positively reclaims the concept of the Eastern harem just as we consider ourselves and our writers inextricably wedded to Turkish culture, embedded in it, though forever foreign. The virtual walls are there: our initial lack of language skills, undeveloped understanding of the culture, and even some of the ethnocentricities that we cling to.  Luckily for us, Istanbul has a long history of welcoming foreigners, and being able to accomodate many different cultures and mindsets.

Utopian Cowtown

Davis, California gives us a hint of the future, a future that suggests that small communities can do great things where mega-cities just don’t have a clue. Most definitions of utopia don’t include submitting to grass police. Yet in one northern California hamlet, residents are lining up for the privilege of having their lawns monitored for eco-incorrect sproutings. “They send people around to check for Bermuda grass and they fine you if they see it growing,” admits Paul Teller, a University of California professor and long-time resident at the exclusive communal Village Homes housing scheme in Davis. When asked if this kind of scrub-scrutiny is a small price to pay for being part of a forward-looking community, the philosophy teacher is passionate in the affirmative. “I paid extra to secure a spot here and now I’m never leaving!”

Due to its unique concept, the professor’s vaunted neighborhood—a 240-home, 60-acre development in an agricultural town 16 miles (26 km) outside the state capitol, Sacramento—has been the subject of national and international television documentaries on environmentally sustainable living. Conceived at the height of the unsettling Ford-era gasoline crisis and economic recession and built in 1975, Village Homes attempted to recreate a traditional sense of community while conserving energy and water in the most efficient ways. Solar water heating and passive space heating designs are incorporated into each home. Neighbors share not only the unfenced yards around each home, they also meet in the large village green, entrust their children to a community day care center, hold performances at the village amphitheatre, and relax in the community-run pool.

Yet this environmentally-conscious sanctuary has not built high walls to shut out a cruel world, as the surrounding town of Davis is also dedicated to an excellent quality of life, clean living and sustainability; it was named one of the healthiest U.S. communities in which to live and retire. With an approach combining innovation, education, recreation and social awareness, Davis is brimming with unique community aspects. In addition to its community-built Art Center, more than $200,000-worth of publicly owned objets d’art are exhibited throughout the charming pedestrian-friendly town, for the residents’ strolling pleasure. The numerous cafes are equipped with modems for easy laptop internet access, the morning Farmer’s Market is an institution of fresh produce and down-home cooking, and neighbors volunteer their time to run the Co-op, a popular communal health food and natural supplies market. The wholesome-looking students in the well-tended public school system consistently get the best test scores of the entire region. Down at City Hall, citizen committees advise 30 boards and commissions on issues ranging from natural resource conservation to childcare.

If pioneering California often fulfills the most progressive of its nation’s dreams, then Davis must surely fulfill the most progressive dreams of its state. With its emphasis on recreational opportunities and greenery (including 25 miles [40 km] of greenbelts winding through town), the City’s budget for parks and community services, unusually, exceeds the combined public safety (police and fire) budget. Recognized since 1977 by the National Arbor Day Foundation as a ‘Tree City’, Davis boasts 18,000 trees—from flowering crabapple and apricot, to oaks, eucalyptus and redwood—lining its streets and parks, with species chosen for both drought resistance and their evergreen and flowering aspects.

Meanwhile, wheelchair ramps, audible traffic lights and Braille signs for the seeing-impaired round out the politically-correct public services to aid independent living. As for the impact of 25,000 University students on the relaxed township, resident Colleen Stanturf proclaims, “They’re not a problem, they all ride.” Bicycles, that is. Also known as the bicycle capital of the U.S., Central Valley-bed Davis sports a renowned system of bikeways that cover 40 miles (65 km) of parks, greenbelts and roadway bike-lanes.

Davis’ commitment to utilize non-traditional approaches to solve traditional problems owes a great debt to its world-class university. One of the ten University of California campuses, it was founded as the ‘University Farm’ in 1908 and its focus on life sciences has led to a stellar international reputation in agricultural, biological, biotechnological and environmental sciences. With students and faculty making up nearly half the total population of 62,000, Davis is one of the last ‘college towns’ in California—and its residents boast the highest level of education per capita in the state, ranking second in the nation.

Many of the university’s ground-breaking research programs influence the way the town works. For instance, the city is on the national forefront of multipurpose storm drainage facilities, with its drainage ponds also serving as wildlife habitats. The school researches commercial farming practices it describes as “more sustainable, ecologically sound, economically profitable and socially just”. Meanwhile organic compost material, a staple of clean agricultural practices, that is derived from the collected yard waste of Davis residents, is redistributed free-of-charge by the City “while supplies last”. Roses as large as salad plates were fed off this rarefied city-issue compost.

Davis has been recycling on a city-wide basis since 1970 and now diverts from its landfills a whopping 50% of its waste-stream (including mixed papers, glass, cans, plastics and yard waste). The extensive curbside recycling program, detailed in its publication Garbage Guide (printed on 100% recycled, 100% post-consumer unbleached paper with soy-based ink of course), also accommodates hazardous waste (like car engine oil and batteries), which the city will pick up and safely dispose. Truly putting its money where its mouth is, City Hall places a priority on the purchase of products made with recycled materials as well.

Throughout neighborhoods visited by jackrabbits, woodpeckers, deer, bluejays and hummingbirds, community gardens which protect rare and endangered species are sponsored and maintained by the University and residents alike. In a state beset by drought, native scrub and water-hardy plants are not only encouraged by the authorities, they’re readily available at local nurseries. Private greenhouses can be spotted all over town, along with rainwater cisterns, windmills, solar panels and innovative wildflower rock-gardens.

In an important stewardship, the school administers more than 30 nature reserves that represent the spectrum of California’s ecological biodiversity. A study with the U.S. Department of Energy focuses on the global environment and climate change. The school’s Center for Design Research meanwhile tackles issues of ecologically-appropriate design (including resource and nature conservation) and socially responsible design (that is, environmental design emphasizing user needs and participation). Yet another institute works on improving the scientific basis for making decisions on environmental issues, both natural and human.

With heady stuff like this going on, it’s no wonder even the heavens aren’t beyond Davis’ utopian reproach. In 1999, mayor Julie Partansky’s pet project unanimously passed into a city ordinance: to reduce ‘sky glow’ (otherwise known as light pollution) so residents can see the stars again. From now on, all new outdoor lighting will be shielded and pointed downward. “We needn’t light this place up like an airport,” Partansky declared. “We’re not San Jose, after all,” the mayor added, taking a swipe at the state’s fastest growing, soulless, highway-laced city in the heart of another Valley, the high-tech Silicon one. In the face of continuing expansion San Jose was bidding adieu at that same time to its last remaining fruit orchard, the principle produce of its fertile valley for much of the past century. For agriculturally-based Davis and environs, the march of progress has very different plans.

++++ Variations of this appeared in numerous publications around the world, including New Renaissance, Vol. 11, No. 3 and its website May 15, 2006