Food! Civics! Action! a walking tour

Come along on a walking tour celebrating San Francisco's Civic Center, whose institutions represent the eternal endeavor to claw back dignity after the advent of agriculture wreaked havoc with egalitarian communities.

Our theme, stepping out about the greater part of Civic Center, is that private property in the Earth divorced humanity from sublime if daunting marriage with Pachamama. Once upon a time it was tribe within nature, competing oft-times with other tribes for access to provisions. But once the most of humanity settled down to cultivate the soil, landlordism arose and with it alienation of most people from full intercourse with Gaia. Now it was the king, the court, the nobility, the gentlefolk who metered out access to gaining a livelihood from field, pasture, and forest.

Civic Center's panoply of law, the arts, home rule, and public education reflects the brighter side of civilization as it claws back a bit of the blessings of community for those fundamentally riven of their Earth citizenship by the custom of private ownership of civilization's lands.

As John Ball put it in 1381, "When Adam delved and Eve span/Who then was the gentleman?"

Good narrative, provocative conversation, a whole lot of civics, and a modest picnic.