Kudos to Rachel Garlin for writing this song, in honor, I am guessing, of Martin Luther King and Barack Hussein Obama, and the work of editors to create this video, using, I am guessing, Rachel’s students in 2009 at King Middle School in Berkeley.

Rachel Garlin is a former Harvard basketball player who returned to her hometown to teach but also writes and performs new song and gets involved with local affairs, as time permits.

In the special edition of “Inside Llewyn Davis” there is a video surveillance film of Rachel Garlin and I sneaking into a Bob Dylan concert, at Regency Ballroom on Van Ness, circa 2007. Afterwards I recall being slightly over-zealous in approaching concert organizer Gregg Perloff of Another Planet Entertainment and asking him to help me get the lease on Palo Alto’s historic Varsity Theatre.

Speaking of which – -and sorry Rachel for the shared limelight — I had a nice chat with Brian Judd the architect who worked on the conversion of 456 University theatre from to retail and then office use. I am still holding on to thinnest of hopes that indeed there is a concert-promotion entity who can make it work there. And no the lunchroom of a corporation that permits we wee plebeians to eat there crumbs is not a public house, nor an acceptable use. This actually goes before ARB and HRB in coming weeks. We should still hold Liz Kniss’s toes to the fire on this, from 1997. It’s a bit of a red herring case, but I think fits the pattern of leadership here listing to the few and not the many. Given the urgency, Buena Vista Mobile Home permit is probably a better litmus test for candidates and council in the near term. (I think leadership should help broker the deal that permits residents there to buy out their current owner, at a fair profit but not his wet dream, which would require council to upzone, to increase allowable density).

Maybe a Rachel Garlin show in Palo Alto, even the humblest thing, like busking at Lytton Plaza, or in front of 456 Uni, would cheer our spirits and who knows change the world. This machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender.