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2001-06-05 | 10:58 p.m.

Went to my board meeting. Lots of good news; quite a change from last time. I understood about 5/8ths of what Birgit and Ed said. I got there first and assumed I was in the wrong place, because I'm always late. Was so grateful to have done something, anything for the publishing house between the last meeting and this. Now I have lots of things to do, including sorting out an "e-commerce solution" for the web site. Which is to say, a third-party credit card processing outfit that doesn't take too much in fees. (If anyone has any good information on this subject, I'm listening.)

As I was walking to the meeting on Third Street, near Buena Vista Gardens, I noticed a tall Indian (as in American Indian) man waiting on the other side of the crosswalk. At his throat he wore a red-and-white beaded ornamental tie and he had pretty silver hair down to his waist. I noticed he was holding hands with a birdlike woman with a silver ponytail who looked very familiar, so I figured, "I must know her from Berkeley." Then as I stared at her, I thought, "I don't know her! That's Jane Goodall!!"

Now did I really see Jane Goodall in San Francisco? I can't rightly say. I sure thought it was her. I told Birgit I was 89 percent positive it was her. Birgit seemed a tiny bit skeptical about my viewing, but also said she had attended a lecture of Goodall's last year. "She's so elegant, isn't she?" Birgit said.

I was still trying to sort it out two hours later, on the way back to my car. It sure did look like Jane Goodall, I thought, but why would she be here, in San Francisco? Doesn't she live in, like, Africa or something? I should've looked at her more closely. And just then, as I crossed in the crosswalk where I had seen her before, she stepped into the SAME crosswalk from the other side! Speak of the devil! She was walking toward me with her hands deep in the pockets of her avocado green jacket, shoulders hunched against the cold. A woman was walking with her, and the Indian man was behind her, walking with a different woman. As Jane-or-not-Jane passed me, she looked right into my eyes and held my gaze for a moment, and the voice inside my head was screaming, ARE YOU JANE GOODALL??

But of course I didn't say anything, because that would be so uncool. She seemed to be coming out of Chevy's at the time, though I wouldn't swear to it, so I could have asked her to point me in the direction of the museum, or anything really, just to hear if she had a British accent (I'm pretty sure Jane Goodall does, but I'm no expert). I wondered, Would Jane Goodall eat at Chevy's? Is she a vegetarian?

Duff met me at the car and I made him take me to a different Chevy's for dinner (one in Emeryville that's right on the water), where after much hemming and hawing, I ordered buffalo with papaya salsa just for the chance to eat buffalo for the first time. I was concerned about ordering it, because the purportedly "hot hot HOT!" papaya salsa sounded so volatile that it seemed like something meant to mask the flavor of something else---namely buffalo meat, and after tasting it I think I might be right about that. Don't plan to be eating more buffalo, Ted Turner notwithstanding. After ordering it, I wondered if Jane Goodall would eat buffalo meat.

I will tell you this much. If that wasn't Jane Goodall, it was a woman doing a damn fine impersonation. To the point of perfectly replicating the Goodall ponytail. Now I want to go find some pictures of her.

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