Buy ‘The Warrior Diet’ by Ori Hofmekler and Diana Holtzberg.

Artwork by Troy Kooper

Eat This

Why raw meat, urine, strawberries, and sunshine are so darn filling

By Gretchen Giles

Books almost without number have been written upon the subject treated in this work. Unfortunately, most of these works are utterly unreliable, being filled with gross misrepresentations and exaggerations, and being designed as advertising mediums for ignorant and unscrupulous charlatans, or worse than worthless patent nostrums.
—Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, from the introduction to his ‘Plain Facts for Old and Young: Embracing the Natural History and Hygiene of Organic Life,’ 1895

Best known today for his inadvertent invention of corn flakes cereal–occurring when a pan of baking grain was left unattended during a medical emergency–Dr. John Harvey Kellogg was 43 years old when he wrote the above lines. He had never partaken of the connubial pleasures of his wife’s bed, believed masturbation to be a sin best cured through copious enema treatments, and sought to cure his patient’s ills through daily applications of yogurt–introduced at the body’s two ends–aided by colon-wracking machines that could ably pump 15 gallons of water into a hapless behind in just a few seconds.

A strict vegetarian and devotee of what he called the pure plainness of “biologic living,” Kellogg also briefly promoted “fletcherizing”–in which one’s food is chewed to a ghastly liquid before swallowing–the use of electric tools to aid digestion, and quick intestinal surgery should all else fail to render the bowel, as he liked to phrase it, “squeaky clean.”

Meats, dairy, and bad habits all conspire, Kellogg believed, to rid one of perfect health and a slim figure. The yeasty, odor-free bowel movement, he assured, was the key to health and happiness. Fruit and grains, he nodded, were the answer. While Kellogg was a celebrity of his day, even prompting lively bowel-movement discussions in middle-class drawing rooms, his name is now filed under “quack.”

Once largely derided, the redoubtable Dr. Robert Atkins, whose Diet Revolution praises meat and fats and assails grains and fruit as the hellish carbo-barrier to health and happiness, now seems to have the estimable New York Times on his side. But the fruitarians might have a word to say about that, as they eat only fruit in their quest for health and happiness.

Not so, say the Paleothin and Neanderthin proponents–raw meats and raw dairy are the way. Uh-uh, sigh the breatharians, a daily sun bath and the very air around you easily give all the essentials you need to live, provided you like the taste of your own urine.

What’s a health and happiness seeker to do? Food and its attendant waste have occupied civilized society for as long as we’ve had the leisure to sit around fretting about it. Splashy new diets are introduced with each book season, and serious fad seekers have found their Zones, urged their waists to Beverly Hills, and puckered an orchard’s worth of grapefruit.

Yet perfection can remain elusive, unless perhaps you’re willing to commit yourself to a particular cult–those food sects that are akin to food sex in devotion and passionate intensity. Herewith we offer a brief round up of food fanaticisms you may have yet to try.

Caveman Nibbles

Also known as the Paleothin or Neanderthin diet, the raw animal foods diet was introduced by Aajonus Vonderplanitz in his 1997 book, We Want to Live. Spurred by the near death of his son, Vonderplanitz turned to an all-raw, mostly meat and dairy diet as a way to both heal his son and eventually himself from cancers. He also believes that he cured himself of diabetes and that his diet will quickly clear up a host of other postmodern physical ills.

Positing that 10,000 years isn’t nearly enough time for the human body to evolve an adequate digestive system for cooked foods, Vonderplanitz promises that eating as a hunter-gatherer is healthiest for our systems. While running after mastodons surely kept early man active, what kept him healthy was the lack of Promethean influences on the beasts–that is, raw meat. Unpasteurized dairy foods, including raw milk and butter–which are illegal to sell in most states–make up the second largest component.

Vegetables, nuts, and fruits are consumed in smaller quantities, as our earliest ancestors were less likely to stumble across a carrot bunch next to an almond tree beside a berry patch than we are their equivalent in the local Safeway. As for grains, well, that sturdy nub of rice remains a food that is just simply better cooked–and is therefore verboten.

Raw eating, whether inclusive of meat and dairy, is reaching an extreme vogue right now. Larkspur’s Roxanne’s restaurant (which is vegan) stands in expensive testament to the potential beauty and damned hard work of such a seemingly simple notion. Roxanne’s chefs go to inordinately complex lengths to turn a length of raw zucchini into a strand of “pasta” or a hunk of “cheese.” The results are evidently stunning but technically beyond the humble grasp of most culinary cave-people.

The Internet is rife with raw-food carnivores expounding on the delicious health benefits of uncooked chicken, lovely hunks of raw beef, and the pure, primal pleasure of eating a goat’s heart fresh from the animal’s cavity. The fat in the accompanying dairy is believed to “seal” the possible toxins of the animal meat away from the body, acting as a kind of molecular gondola that serenely carries such badness toilet-bound.

As with all evangelicals, disagreements are bound to arise. Why, some want to know, is dairy recommended in such abundance when early man would have considered himself lucky to be able to grab a . . . a deer and milk it? How would he, should such a miracle occur, then know to churn the deer milk into some semblance of–ugh!–deer butter? Therefore dairy should be very limited, other cadres of raw carnivores logically affirm.

Perhaps the toughest aspect of this plan is that, aside from the occasional visit to a sushi or salad bar, 21st-century Neandereaters are most likely forced to dwell in their own high-rise caves at mealtimes. They can be spotted lugging Tupperware around with them to dinner parties or business lunches. Thanksgiving dinner isn’t to be eaten; the Christmas roast goose goes untouched, the diet adherent presumably pining for a slice of the plucked, white thing before it went into the pan. As with the earliest humans, Paleothinners are often forced to go it alone.

(It should be noted that any bias detected here stems from the unfortunate lunchtime sight of one Neanderthinner stabbing chunks of raw, wet steak into his mouth while chugging from a bottle of unpasteurized milk, resulting in a horrible Masai’s feast of milk and blood dribbling down his beard. Eating this diet in solitude may indeed be preferable.)

Food’s Lovewisdom

A fancy-pants moniker for what we now call plain old raw-food vegetarianism, vitarianism was propounded by the marvelously named Dr. Johnny Lovewisdom in his 1953 text, Spiritualizing Dietetics. Theorizing that a diet solely composed of those watery substances known as fruits and vegetables would allow the body’s processes to move more quickly, dispatching fluid and cellulose posthaste, Lovewisdom supposed that such elimination would cool the libido and free the mind. Thus both dulled and enlightened, one could spend more time on the potentials of brain and soul.

He is reportedly still living a monastic life atop an Andean peak in Ecuador, presumably unaware that he shares close connections to Dr. Kellogg in his fascination with the lower functions of bowels and vice.

Feeling Fruity

While a meatless diet is hardly news, the various striations of the vegetarian lifestyle are dizzying. There are, of course, the vegans, who eschew all animal products save breast milk and yet are still puzzlingly able to feast on those luscious-looking cakes at Whole Foods. There are the Rastafarian vegetarians, who, according to the New Zealand Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, “in general exclude all red meat, milk, fats and oils of animal origin but may include fish depending on nationality.”

Polo-vegetarians eat chicken; pescos fish for food in the deep, briny sea; lactos enjoy milk; and lacto-ovos won’t eat red meat, fish, or chicken but don’t mind occasionally tucking into a three-egg cheese omelet, particularly in a strange town under an assumed name.

But fruitarians snub the lovely vegetable all together, solely consuming fruits in a riot of complex carbohydrates and sugars that must make Dr. Atkins reach desperately for another butter-besmirched lobster tail. Vegetables, some fruitarians aver, have feelings too, which possibly accounts for the sad appearance one encounters when the cauliflower’s been left too long in the fridge. The only way to tiptoe around the potential emotions of a celery stalk is to simply not consume it, maintaining a guilt-free savage enjoyment of the lowly strawberry instead.

But which is the veggiest veggie? The in-fighting abounds, with polos turning up their vaguely batter-fried noses at lacto-ovos, pescos rumored to hardly even be vegetarians, fruitarians enjoying the wild ride of glucose imbalance, and no one understanding the Rastafarians at all aside from the usual happy agreement regarding Bob Marley and ganja.

What Would Jesus Eat?

The broccoli-is-next-to-godliness air of the segregated food castes within the vegetarian world shouldn’t, however, earn them the derision displayed by those adherents of the Bible diet. Firmly convinced that the genesis of the meal plan is contained in the holy book, these followers believe–at least according to the illuminating, if tongue-in-cheek, Bible Diet Quiz existing on the Internet–that vegetarians are “weak heathens, worshipping other gods.” Not, one might murmur, a very Christian sentiment.

But God can be stern, and the Bible diet thunders such Old Testament sentiments as that evil people should be forced to eat human flesh, including their own and that of their children; that sinners should be made to bake excrement into their bread; flagons of urine must be drunk; no weasels may be consumed, yet locusts will make an acceptable alfresco meal; and that wine is fortunately encouraged, but roast vulture and steaming swan are not.

As if food and fat and body image and health concerns aren’t emotionally loaded enough, the Bible diet is pleased to reintroduce the concept of sin to the dinner table. Gluttony, you may remember, is one. In some, albeit smaller, traditions so too is asking for seconds, propping elbows on the table, taking napkins off the lap, not asking for seconds, and reaching “boarding house” style across the table for more butter, which in itself reflects the wayward aims of the gluttonous.

While some may secretly hope that the Bible diet consists mostly of bread and wine, its bare-bones structure–when stripped of dogma about evil people and cannibalism–preaches a sensible, sustainable spate of organic, unrefined, nonprocessed foods taken in moderation. Only those fish that swam with both fins and have scales may be consumed, pork and rabbit are absent (as are horse and dog), and tripe fares not well.

Otherwise, simply sleep well, exercise daily, fast once monthly, “Let the sun shine upon your skin,” and above all, be nice to others–even those heathen vegetarians. Thin thighs in 30 days must surely await, because God is never wrong.

Breatharians

Indeed, letting the sun shine upon your skin is more than just a pleasant Biblical admonition; it’s a full three square meals if you’re a breatharian. Asserting that water and sun, the occasional dollop of dried kelp, and–incredibly–a fast-food burger are enough sustenance for true believers, breatharians essentially claim an aerobic existence.

While there are more than a few disturbing stories of practitioners who began to vomit black liquid after 21 days and died–21 days being a mortal limit of sorts and black liquid a creepily unifying theme–there are enough people who claim to live this way to give the notion some strange credence.

Born from the ancient Chinese technique of Yan Xin Qigong, whose tenets inform such mainstream practices as feng shui, tai chi, and acupuncture, the idea of breatharianism has since been taken up by rich yachtsmen and Australian housewives alike. Some followers estimate that there are 5,000 of their ilk worldwide.

Claiming to “live on light,” breatharians tend to the randy side of the nutritional scale, though one wonders at the necessary stamina. Breatharian Wiley Brooks, age 66 and a former contestant on That’s Incredible!, told Colors magazine that his body is a “love machine” and that when he does break his air-and-light fast it is to consume such nutrients as are possibly contained in a Big Mac and Coke. It’s a homeopathic thing, he explains: He’s surrounded by junk culture and foods, so consuming them adds balance.

Juergen Buche, N.D., writes on his breatharian blog that he was out on his boat one day and just decided to stop eating. He sailed for three full weeks fueled by sunlight, fresh sea air, spring water, and generous draughts of his own life-giving urine. He claims now to eat only on Saturdays, mostly enjoying a sere spoonful of dried kelp, and to sip the occasional glass of wine with his fortifying meal of sunshine.

But the queen of the breatharian movement is Australian mother of two Ellen Greve, who goes by the name Jasmuheen. She came to world notice in 2000 when one of her followers allegedly reached the fatal 21-day-black-liquid limit, and the former Greve found herself rallied against by protesters upon arriving in London to lecture.

Jasmuheen claims not to have consumed more than the odd cup of tea since 1993, though a journalist on her flight did purportedly hear her dally with the steward about the possibility of getting one of those yummy airplane meals. There have been three documented deaths associated with breatharianism, which should be enough to make one look for one’s sunshine firmly on a plate.

Eat, Drink, Be Merry

Media doctor Dean Edell advises us all to relax. Have a little of this, a little of that, don’t smoke, make love, take a hike, be happy for chrissakes. But all of those who so passionately follow their particular food religions do so because it does make them happy–or so they hope. What’s striking about the above panoply is how the human body soldiers on, regardless of what it is or isn’t given for nourishment and/or punishment.

In The Warrior Diet, Ori Hofmekler assures that the best way to health and happiness is to starve all day and then feast after 8pm each night. He seems to look and feel all right. Zone author Peter J. D’Adamo asserts that it’s merely a matter of eating according to blood type. Fit for Life authors Harvey and Marilyn Diamond are certain that it’s all a matter of food combinations.

So who’s right? If these varied diet plans have proven anything at all, the answer can only be that you are, with each bite you take. After all, dinner is just a meal you eat at night.

From the February 13-19, 2003 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Buy the ‘Princess Bride’ DVD (special edition).

Buy the Beach Boys’ ‘Pet Sounds,’ which includes ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice.’

Buy Cyndi Lauper’s ‘She’s So Unusual.’

Buy Whitney Houston’s self-titled 1985 debut album.

Buy the ‘Funny Face’ DVD.

Family Values

With a firm thumb at tradition, marriage gets put on hold

By Davina Baum and Sara Bir

It’s not that true love has changed. True love probably never changes. It’s true, after all. It’s the accoutrements of true love that change. The gender expectations (how a girl and a boy behave; how two boys or two girls behave; indeed, how three girls and a boy behave), the sex, the registry list (an Amazon.com registry? Or REI?), the living situation.

As the impressive clergyman in the film version of The Princess Bride–tongue-tyingly played by Peter Cook–so eloquently said, “Mawidge . . . mawidge is what bwings us togewer today . . .”

It does, it brings us together. But it also separates us in how we approach it, compared to previous generations. As times change, so do traditions, and marriage, though not quite on the chopping block, isn’t the Holy Grail of true love that it once was. Here, for this rather introspective Valentine’s Day issue, we look at two perspectives on a girl’s big day, prolonged.

Prewedded Bliss, Part I: Living Together

Over the years, the naughtiness has shed from living in sin. In our present cultural climate, it’s not even sinful. Not that it matters much to begin with. For many couples, it’s just a fact of life, put into being by a series of circumstances–rent, careers, companionship, love. Ideally, love.

But what’s so bad about making it official? “When I was young, people just didn’t do that,” a relationship expert otherwise known as my mother reminds me. “A couple would never, ever just live together.” In forgoing the courtship for the convenience of cohabitation, she says, a couple misses out on that anticipation, the other side of the rainbow to come, the longing the Beach Boys expressed so sweetly and sincerely in “Wouldn’t It Be Nice.”

I can see her point: if two people are serious enough about each other to share their snoring habits, dirty underwear, and utility bills, why not get the papers to prove it? I can also see that in love and war, things are not always best done by the book.

There is more at stake in being married than . . . well, than just being married. To get married, a couple must first have a wedding, a wedding that is built up to be the opening of a door to a wonderland, a wonderland of fluffy monogrammed towels and gold-rimmed Noritake dinner service for 12 (used once a year, if that) and deluxe barbecue accessory sets.

Marriage, it seems, is a step that leads not only to the union of two souls but also to a jackpot of material goodies necessary for a refined middle-American life, and what follows it must be a small and brand-new starter house to hold all of it. Once again, my mother: “After your father and I first got married, we lived on the Air Force base in a little one-room A-frame cottage that had been built as temporary housing for the state fair. I cooked all of our meals in an electric skillet. Oh, it was a wonderful time.”

We, my mother and I, often rail against the excess of modern marriage. “You enjoy each other more when you have less,” she’ll say. Then I’ll say, “And you’ll have fewer credit problems and more time to spend with each other. Newlywed bliss!”

Living in sin eschews all of those burdensome material gains and puts an inversion on the delights of one couple, united, living on the cheap. Instead of first marrying and getting a little economy apartment together, my boyfriend and I moved me into his little apartment, so we get to revel uninterrupted in our prenuptial joy, making furniture out of asparagus crates and marveling in awe at the collective mass of our books, which make their home in piles on the floor along the wall.

We have one cereal bowl and four dinner plates, none of which match. Nor do any of our sheets. It’s lovely, and someday, after getting married, it won’t be like that, not as much. My parents went from their one-room A-frame to a three-bedroom house with a basement full of old dishes, pots, pans, Christmas decorations, computers, clothing, toys, model trains–you name it. They’d probably go back in time if they could, before my brother and I were around and both spare hours and crazy fun were in greater supply (and I guess they could, sort of, because all of the furniture and the electric skillet from the first years of their marriage is still in the basement).

I love living with my boyfriend; it’s so idyllic. We are not at that worn-in point with each other yet, and simple stuff, like deciding where to put up new posters, is still exciting. We have hours of sleeping in, only a few rooms to clean, dinners that are not rushed, someone always around to hold a nail that needs pounding into the wall–and no kids and no mortgage payments. Everything good is ahead of us, and everything good is happening now. Why would anyone want to rush out of this?

Marriage itself is not intimidating–it’s the ceremony of it, the wedding. Which is silly. A wedding is just one day, while a marriage lasts (theoretically) a lifetime. A marriage is a living, organic thing that demands an investment of self, and of time and love and understanding. As for a wedding, it can be seen as a one-off investment of cash and tedious planning, of agonizing decisions over which fonts to use on invitations and what color of bubble blowers to pass out to the guests.

Weddings are fun, especially when they are not yours. All you need to do is show up, eat the entrées from the chafing dishes at the buffet, drink midrange Chardonnay, and dance a little bit. Being a member of the wedding party is even better, if you have a short and witty toast, and a spare $150 for a periwinkle-blue dress you’ll never wear again, no matter how pretty it is.

It’s putting on the shebang that’s the big deal, a package deal of common yet senseless conventions. Like this wedding candle business. What does lighting a big, fat, white candle have to do with getting married? And vows: vows, important vows that will set the tone for the rest of your life, must be decided upon. Or written.

The violinist who will play a tasteful version of “Always” must be located, and the vocal soloist, and the terrible egotistical DJ who sees the wedding reception not as a wedding reception but as his own personal variety show. And thousands of dollars must be spent to provide a venue for a douche bag to play “Mony, Mony,” “I Will Survive” (what does that song have to do with weddings, anyway), and “The Chicken Dance.”

True, there are weddings replete with wedding candles, tedious vows, and bad DJs that are beautiful and perfect and moving. All of these things ultimately do not matter, because it’s about the couple, and if they really mean it, everything that’s awful or wonderful melts away and it’s just the bride and the groom and the significance of their commitment. As it should be. But it seems that some couples get married not to be married, but so they can have a wedding.

When my best friend and I were young, we played with our Barbies at every possible moment, and our Barbie dolls must have renewed their wedding vows with their Ken doll husbands a hundred times. It was one of our favorite Barbieland scenarios. We’d dress our Barbies up in their wedding gowns, do their hair, set up the Barbie Wedding Playset with the little plastic three-tiered cake, and march our dolls down the aisle.

After the ceremony, we’d put on the cassette tape of Cyndi Lauper’s She’s So Unusual, and they’d have a big dance party. Then they’d listen to the first Whitney Houston solo album and make sweet love all night long.

There’s no point in lying. Like many women, I enjoy fantasizing about my wedding, though it’s pretty vague except for a few clear details: I’m wearing the dress that Audrey Hepburn wore in Funny Face, the ceremony is short and sweet, and my boyfriend will have gotten a haircut just for the occasion. Everyone is glowing with smiles. The reception is a big party. We have simple, white cakes and a procession of lovely cream pies, both of which I will have made myself. Our friends’ band plays (a postrock wedding!), and all of the guests are happy, so happy. They go on drinking Veuve Clicquot and Pabst Blue Ribbon until dawn.

Joe and I spend our wedding night in the Caveman Room at the Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo. Then we get back and everything is the same as before, only we have gold bands on our ring fingers and I sign my name differently.

Not for now, though; we’re not even engaged. Too poor, too cheap, too wishy-washy, too satisfied with the way things are. A wedding is scary. Sometimes I’d like there to be a wedding pill, and after taking it–poof!–you’d be married.

But that seems beside the point too–that if you are going to plunge into marriage, you need to do it full-on, wedding and all, because a wedding does change things, as they say, for better and for worse. Until then, I’ll be satisfied if, looking back on this sinful era someday, I will think of these years as happy and carefree. Which is what they feel like now, and hopefully will after my boyfriend and I get around to getting married.

–Sara Bir

Prewedded Bliss, Part II: Living Apart

We lived together once, and it was bliss. Then we got engaged. Soon after, I packed up my CDs and my cat, and moved out.

It wasn’t for some quixotic attempt at revirginization, though perhaps if I found religion, I would feel more at peace about the decision. It wasn’t because we argued or decided we needed more time or couldn’t deal with each other’s personal hygiene. In fact, we’re still engaged–but now I live 50 miles away. The wedding has been put off, and as a result, our life together is on hold.

Our lives apart are, however, rollickingly good. I chose my career over my fiancé, and it’s working out great.

It’s terribly practical, of course. A paying job in today’s economic climate is not something to take lightly. Nor is a career move and the opportunity to advance. But since when does practicality play a role in love and romance? Since I grew up.

This is new to me, the understanding that practicality and romance can exist at once. It is difficult, now, to understand why I thought that the mentally unstable and alcoholic carpenter made a good match for me. Or the Russian souvenir hawker who didn’t speak English and had an aversion to condoms.

It’s all so clear in hindsight, now that I’ve found the man I want to marry for real. I can’t imagine it being any other way.

Except for the niggling details of our living situation.

The reality of this modern world is that relationships and marriage are often relegated to the passenger seat while career sits hard-headedly in the driver’s seat. According to a recent “State of the Nation” report in The Atlantic Monthly, the paradigm of the single-earning household has been firmly jettisoned, and now, more often than not, a household consists of two workers.

While the two-earner household has deep repercussions for many aspects of our social and political safety net, it also speaks to the increased wage-earning role for women. Though this was established two decades ago, the changing paradigm now affects a new generation–namely, me.

Me, the terribly unambitious woman who had the opportunity to take on a great job at the expense of her relationship–and took it.

I thought at first that the compromise was obvious. His job wasn’t as good as mine; he wasn’t happy and I was. Therefore, my job wins and he moves here. It seemed practical at the time, resplendent in stark black and white–because, after all, how could we have a relationship if we only saw each other two days out of the week?

I scrambled to come up with job possibilities for him, and I presented them with great excitement. I made contacts and talked him up to his potential new employers. And he politely ignored me, plugging away at his beleaguered dotcom, barraging me with stories of how he was underappreciated and overworked. Then, somehow, the practicality kicked in.

Despite the problems, he loves what he does and he believes in the company. He loves the city: the sunny apartment that he’s lived in for seven years, biking to work, playing pickup basketball in the Mission. Is it fair of me to pull him away from that, to make him either quit his job or suffer the nightmare of commuting?

Financially, living apart is no good. We both pay separate rent, phone bills, utilities. We both spend too much on gas, a resource that, as any patriotic American knows, needs to be reserved for the military planes. I spend too much money on takeout, since I no longer have his kitchen prowess at my fingertips.

But it’s turning out OK. We have a city house and a country house–just like rich people! Though we spend most weekends in the North Bay, there’s always a house to crash at if we decide to go to the city for a night. Sunday nights, when he leaves, are lonely and depressing. But I know exactly what buttons to press to turn on the television, my surrogate lover. (My shame at this obvious weakness for empty entertainment is trumped, every so often, by my need for, well, empty entertainment in lieu of his unempty company.)

The truth is, if the standard paradigm of love and marriage doesn’t work, then it need not be applied. There are any number of ways that couples make do now–in these progressive times–that the dual shackles of morality and religion are loosened. Couples are living together longer, prolonging marriage and baby making, while ambition and career take precedence.

Though my East Coast friends started pounding the marriage drum themselves years ago and are now getting started on the babies, most people I know are waiting longer to get married. Statistics bear this out. The average age for a first marriage is creeping higher and higher as young professionals (urban or otherwise) focus on career before relationships.

It’s not ideal, by any means. But it’s livable for now, and–above all–it’s practical. The wedding, the gateway to our future life together (really together), sparkles in the distance.

I’m tired of being asked when he’s moving up here. I’m tired of having a fractured social life: single during the week, part of a couple during the short, short weekend. I’m tired of the implications that our relationship will not last if both of us remain romantic martyrs to our careers.

I think about the wedding often. It’s just as untraditional as our situation is now. I picture it as a huge party–no white dress, no walking down the aisle, just champagne and sun and friends and family.

I suppose I no longer see it as one or the other. The relationship is secure, though the distance is certainly a test. My panic attacks at not knowing where he is have abated somewhat. If a terrible accident took him away from me tomorrow, I doubt that I’d see my sacrificing my job for him as worthy (and learning not to think this way is part of the process). But, barring disaster, a girl’s got to do what a girl’s got to do. And that, if nothing else, can stand as a rallying cry for an unmarried generation.

–Davina Baum

From the February 6-12, 2003 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.