[img]1792|right|Jim Clarke||no_popup[/img]The rear end of Culver City’s plastic bag ban – aimed at small retailers – goes into effect tomorrow, and traditional persons across the region are shlumping about in a funk.

Environmentalists hovering in the background said that the cheers drowning out the boos are emanating from the marine life in all wet corners of Southern California. Their long endangered lives have been extended.

There is not anyone south of God who can verify the consistently untethered claims of environmentalists. However, it makes them feel better. And don’t you know that is why normal people were put on earth.

A sterling exception to my sensitive sarcasm is City Councilman Jim Clarke. He leads the kind of noble life to which many of us should aspire. I suggest soberly that Mr. Clarke spends less time in the confessional at St. Augustine’s than any other member of the parish.

He lives by a set of firmly held ideals that reliably lean progressive. Whether the matter is as controversial as killing plastic bags, marching for climate change, or as traditional as feeding the hungry, Mr. Clarke brings the same unflappable calm demeanor to the decision table. That quality is as rare as cars with running boards.

He believes that tomorrow will mark the opening of an historic era in Culver City. By his estimation, 30 percent of the plastic bags that dangerously fly from a consumer’s careless hands toward a body of water, original within the walls of small retailers.

Thirty years ago, a friend asked me, “If a rabbi followed you for seven days, how would he know you are a Jew?”

How would a private eye know that Mr. Clarke is a true environmentalist?

Follow him for seven days.

It’s in the Bag. No, It Isn’t.

As the Councilman tells the story, after dinner at a Culver City restaurant last evening, he wanted to take home leftovers. Offered his boxed food in a plastic bag, he declined the bag and walked out with the box of food under his arm. “I don’t need the plastic bag,” he said. “Just adds to environmental clutter.”

Unsuccessfully, I kept trying to catch him.

Earlier in the week, he shopped at Pet Smart, and the clerk offered to plastic bag his purchases. “No, thanks,”Mr. Clarke said, and left with them filling his arms.

At the supermarket, he admitted to putting veggies in plastic bags.

Gotcha, I thought, mercifully silently.

Wrong.

Mr. Clarke explained that when he gets home he drops them into the vegetable bin. When enough plastic bags accumulate, he returns them to his favorite supermarket where they are dropped into a recycling bin.

If he preaches softly, Mr. Clarke lives an idealistic life in stentorian tones, even, or especially, when no one is looking.