Little Cat Feet

I drive south on Skyline Boulevard and it is like driving into Brigadoon. The fog is mystic and silver. It swirls and greets me like an old friend on this perfect cozy summer day.

I have no patience for people who complain about this magic.  The rest of the country has been sweltering in triple digit temperatures. Despite whatever Michelle Bachman tells you, global warming is here to stay.

But this is San Francisco, the land of mist and honey, a city where we can wear sweaters any day of the year, where even the hottest of days finds salvation in the cascade of fog over the Twin Peaks. We live on a peninsula separated from the mainland by a beneficent marine layer as charming as a mystery novel.  Like Camelot, the winter is forbidden 'til December and July and August may not be too hot.

I spent more than 25 summers in New York, the city that never sleeps, and I can tell you why it doesn't sleep: because Manhattan is hot and sticky and loud.  It gets hurricanes and blizzards and earthquakes.

We, however, are blessed to live in the city where, as Anna Madrigal puts it, it is always fireplace weather.  In San Francisco you know the forecast in advance. Foggy in the morning, sunny at noon, foggy at night.

So when someone walks up to me and says, "God, I cannot take one more gray day," I want to scream: "Move to Texas, where despite whatever Governor Perry tells you, they still have the hottest July in history. Go to Southern California, where that tan you get will always have you looking over your epidermal layer."

Robert Frost got it right when he wrote, "Some say the world will end in fire." It will. The icebergs will melt, the ocean levels will rise, the Southwest will turn into one vast desert.  Give me an excuse to wear scarves instead of speedos any day.  Harry S. Truman got it wrong: "If you can't stand the cool, get out of the kitchen."

With a Perspective, this is Kevin Thaddeus Fisher-Paulson.