A Cornucopia

Of good stuff in Impromptus today. Excerpting wouldn't do it justice.

Update: Well, a tiny excerpt because Nordlinger had an item that hits close to home (literally). He presents an e-mail from a reader:

Jay,

I've just moved from San Rafael (that would be in rich-'n'-liberal Marin County) to Novato (still Marin, very different demographic), and the contrast is striking. How do you know you're moving from deep blue to reddish Marin? For starters, the cars are smaller and older, there are fewer SUVs, and the pickup trucks look like they're routinely used actually to haul stuff. And in San Rafael I doubt you'd see the bumper sticker on the truck parked just up the street the first day of our move. It said, "LICENSE TO KILL TERRORISTS NO. 91101."

Our last next-door neighbor's car sported a Kucinich sticker. What a difference ten miles or so makes!

Oh, how true it is! Guess where your correspondent was delivering pizzas in 1984? Novato! Novato is a place unto itself. Very redneck. 1984 in Novato looked and felt like 1975 anywhere else. Marin is where I grew up. But not in Novato.