TOMATOES are in season, and we're swamped with fresh food, picked a few seconds from use, as "organic" as can be.

This is a first try at using a cell phone pic for the home page photo (not too bad).

Chris's deck pots are producing as many as he can eat--usually served right off the vine and thinly cut, combined with multiple slices of home grown zuchini and cucumber, slathered with fresh chives, basalmic vinegar and extra virgin olive oil.

Eating fresh produce makes us meaner, leaner, sleep better at night and look better, too!

Therefore it's high time (?) we get really, really, "fresh" with our readers and inform them that there's only two ways to truly do that: GROW YOUR OWN or buy at a farmers market from producers you know or can visit.

And you may think, heck, I shop at the San Francisco Marina Safeway (the largest in the world according to myth; used to work there), and they have the freshest produce You--I--We can get.

However, you'd be utterly wrong about that.

Therefore, let's talk "SUPERMARKET FRESH" for a moment or two.

One afternoon in the early 1970s I was helping out in the produce department cooler box in Novato Safeway, #574. I was an Apprentice Retail Clerk, local #1119.

Retail Clerk was my first well-paying job and I loved it; especially where I had shopped for years with my family, knew many of the people who both shopped and worked there, and brother Michael had worked there before me, and knew everyone, too.

You could work full-time, overtime (when available) and part-time and go to school, too.

And it was also very, very busy, maybe a holiday weekend, possibly Labor Day, or Thanksgiving.

The walk-in refrigeration box was emptying out quickly, revealing still unopened cartons on the very bottom of corner stacks that had been stored there for some time now.

And I had uncovered a box of romaine lettuce that, according to the label, had been received 6 weeks before, meaning the lettuce was probably going-on two months old, or even older, since harvest.

And I yelled over to the Produce Manager, (probably Alex, Don or Fred): "Romaine lettuce, been here a month and a half, what do ya' want me to do with it?" And he yelled back: "Trim off all the limp leaves until the head looks fresh again, then triple the price and sell them for lettuce hearts."

So I did. And this wasn't evil, either. it was simply a high-volume well-run business trying to flourish on a measly 1-3% profit margin and trying not to waste anything.

And you can grow all the fresh vegetables needed for a small family in 10-20 large deck pots with saucers, not hurt the deck, and pick a great variety of fresh greens in seconds year-round, utterly fresh and delectable.

And not worry about gophers, either. and get the soil just right for what you want to grow, too, with a cheap test kit (although I've been doing this awhile and don't usually test anymore, as I know the soil and what I've put in it).

So, remember, Capitalism is only the second-worst economic system, and everyone operates out of self-interest like Darwin says we're supposed to; survival of the fittest.

And if you want to get and stay fit as long as possible by eating truly FRESH food, you'll have to shop at a farmer's market or grow your own.

There's bunches of previously promised "Mr. Marin" and "Miss Marin" pics coming to "Photography" next rev, with the models' names and pageants identified in newly re-discovered records--and much more photography coming soon, too.

And we've been studiously playing the guitar for an hour or two a day for over a year now, so we're about to post a coupla' new songs, including "Walking on Air" with the second verse it always needed. I hope the other authors, Burt Tschache and Bill Wright, like the addition.

Oh yeah--I've copied a lot of CLOWD (Clearlake Oaks Water District) documents to a new top-level directory, too. Although a purely local issue, it bodes badly for an increasingly hotter world.

Enjoy!