Two things its hard to give me credit for: tilapia and Kite Hill.

I’ll start with tilapia, a rather bland tasting small fish.  We have it in the U.S. because of me.  But what I did was to use my phone and my networks which are not visible to the world.  Here is how it happened.

Tilapia

I had a few clients in the Central Valley of California who were professional entomologists, advisors to farmers on pest control.  In general they favored alternatives to commercial pesticides.

One of them phoned me to ask if I knew of a way to control mosquitoes in rice fields?  It was a problem for his clients in the Sacramento Valley.  The fields in that area are flooded for rice cultivation by several large rivers. Rice grown in this area is one third of all the rice grown in the U.S. There are cities and towns in the area where mosquitoes are a problem during rice flooding periods.

I phoned my friend Katsu in Japan who was the head of the organic farmers in Japan and a close friend.  I put him on the board of a Third World aid group in Washington D.C. where I had influence and made a few phone calls to get him the presidency of the world organic farmers group.

Katsu told me Japanese organic farmers used a fish called tilapia, in English, to live in the rice fields and eat the mosquitoes and their larva.  

I phoned my friend the entomologist and told him and within two years all the rice growers were growing tilapia and selling them on the commercial market.

No one saw me make those two phone calls.  If you like tilapia, 'you're welcome.'

Kite Hill

The large park area next to my house in San Francisco is called Kite Hill.   In this case it was more than two phone calls that created this park.  

A neighbor called me, Felicia Ortiz, to say she wanted to create some vest-pocket parks in open lots in San Francisco.  The term ‘vest-pocket parks’ apparently came from a friend of mine Bonnie Ora Sherk. An environmental artist.

I told Mrs. Ortiz that I would help her if she was willing to be chair of a group to create the parks and the first park would be on the large open area near both of us that I had gotten down-zoned to single family homes a few years earlier.  She said ‘yes.’

I then phoned three political friends of mine.  I asked one to create a political action group to design and commission vest-pocket parks, with Mrs. Ortiz as chairperson.  The second one I asked to create a bond issue for the next election for $12 million to create vest-pocket parks. The third one I called to ask him to raise $50,000 for the bond issue and to buy the appropriate media.

We won easily and bought the land for the park.  The Park and Recreation Department takes care of our park.

Just phone calls and my network of friends.  I take credit but the evidence for my role is not visible.