Don’t you just love “Progressives?” Well, in Petaluma they actually do love Progressives, but I digress. Perhaps the most salient feature of a Progressive is his or her desire to tell everyone else how to live, without them actually having to do whatever they recommend. Occasionally, when they do walk the talk, they are shocked, SHOCKED I TELL YOU, to discover that their theoretical mandates for social (ecological, political, economic) behavior come with real-world consequences. Witness the complaints by some progressives living in Petaluma’s much touted mixed-use neighborhoods about the noise created by…the mixed-use. One problem that Progressives have with prescribing behavior for others is that most progressives (as self-anointed intellectuals, philosophers, artists. spiritualists, healers, poets and freelance Internet marketing consultants) have only a glancing awareness with what it’s like to live in the real world of feeding a large family on a small paycheck, keeping a business in the black, building a structure, running a farm, or working two jobs while going to school to get a degree in something more practical than Post-Modern Feminist Environmental Philosophy. Or, for that matter, running an ice cream company.