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(Jane Jacobs) has also watched other businesses - independent bookstores and hardware stores - become endangerd by chain stores with hardly a peep from residents or local government. "One thing that astonishes me always is how stupid chambers of commerce and boards of trade are about what's good for them," she says.

"Long ago, as a chld, I read a story that's always stuck with me about the man who sold the sun for a guinea." Jacobs tells me of the poor young man who one day finds a golden coin lying in the gutter. In his hunt for another one, he never looks up at the sun again. It's her metaphor for short-sighted institutions that focus on money and ignore things that may be valuable in other ways.

Quote from a July 24/July 25 article in the Financial Times, Lunch with Jane Jacobs: Street activists's saving grace, by Jeff Pruzan. Jacobs' latest book, Dark Age Ahead, is available everywhere good books are sold.