Training Day One; Still Here --- Day 8/312

Walk: SF City Guides Training (at SF Main Library)
Distance: 5 Miles, small yoga

Charles Fracchia, grand old man of San Francisco History (and Founder of Rolling Stone Magazine), at signing for latest of his many books: When the Water Came Up to Montgomery Street: San Francisco During the Gold Rush

So here's an indication to herself that Ciwt has undertaken a challenge: She becomes desperate to move...Where?  Anywhere but where she is presently living.

Now she has started this new San Francisco Guides Training.  Perhaps the main and most obvious challenge it entails is public speaking.  You know, the #1 fear they say.  But then there are things like the unknown, being criticized, making a fool of herself, bad hair days.  These are pretty universal aversions from what she reads, and they have already begun in spade. 

But her secret - and maybe uniqueish - reason that drives her to almost call Bekins is, well, her snobbism.  There it is.  To explain (justify), Ciwt loved history when she was growing up; she majored in it in college.  She loved all the grand personages - from the Pharoahs on to the Founding Fathers and into the present.  She admired the erudition, vast intelligence, fineness, grandeur - just elevated superhumanness of these historical personages. She loved learning about them on their pedestals and getting as close as she could to their exalted coattails.  

San Francisco history is none of this really.  No exalted personages and grand, still quoted speeches.  No patient, clever, admirable multi-year diplomatic skills here.  In fact, until 1776 San Francisco was undiscovered except by the indiginous Ohlones and maybe 50 others, and largely overlooked as barren and useless with terrible weather even after it had been.  Then came 1848 and the Gold Rush!  In a matter of months, every (mostly man) who wanted the promises instant riches offered got on a ship, or horse, or ox cart or just his own two feet and got himself to San Francisco.  Between January 1848 and December 1849 the now City's population went from @500 to @25,000.

Those who came weren't your intellectuals, religious pilgrims, lawyers, doctors.  Or, if they were, they became gold panners, shop and brothel keepers, magistrates of opium dens and gambling houses, brawlers, murderers. No time to climb onto pedestals.  But somehow this assortment of 'non-Founding Fathers and Mothers' used whatever ingenuity they possessed to fashion an utterly unique, inclusive and beautiful city that drew and has kept (snobby) Ciwt all these years. 

But maybe Ciwt isn't alone in her 'snobbiness.' Maybe most people want their (fore) fathers and mothers to be patently admirable.  Maybe this; maybe that.  Ciwt keeps trying but can't quite close the door on this topic.  So, she'll continue on into the challenge.  No calling Bekins to the rescue today.