I feel like somebody convened the Grand Meeting of the Great Parking Space Debate, and somehow my invitation got lost in the mail.

Otherwise, I’m sure I’d have a full understanding of why every parking space in the state of California was designed to fit one half of a Smart Car – and I’m not even sure which half.

Standing in my bedroom in 1974, my mother schooled me once again with her steps for finding the perfect job. Having heard it all before, I wanted to scream. At 22 years old, I was now a college graduate and, in my snarky opinion, no longer needed her advice.

But as I pounded the streets of San Francisco’s Financial District in my long, homemade jean skirt covered in embroidered flowers and a peasant blouse that slid down my right shoulder, I began to wonder whether perhaps her words were true. High-end law firms and such had an image to protect – and looking like a bygone hippie didn’t fit the bill.

My trusty, ecologically correct little Prius began showing signs of early Auto-Alz- heimer’s a few months ago. Despite my husband’s urgings, I put off getting a new car. Sure, the Prius was 17 years old, but it only had 116,000 miles on it, and at the rate I was accumulating miles (less than 1,000 miles a year), I had hoped it would be the last car I would own.

But our trusted mechanic, the same one who told my husband that his 14-year-old Camry was good for at least another 100,000 miles, held out no hope. Those warning lights weren’t a fluke, the super mega battery that powered my car was beginning to fail, the power steering was liable to go out if I drove at freeway speed, and I should get rid of the car while it was still drivable at all. He obligingly cleared the warning lights one last time, and we trundled down to the car dealer.

I don’t have any empirical evidence to bolster this observation, but it certainly feels palpable to me that there has been a subtly thunderous shift in the ethos of Silicon Valley.

During a bank transaction the other day, the teller asked me, “Are you Chinese?” I replied, “No, but everyone thinks I am; I get that question all the time.” She immediately responded, “That’s because your skin is not too white.” She paused a beat before adding, “Sorry to say.”

At a recent meeting, Kim Cranston of Los Altos Forward shared some numbers from the recent election. Per his research, 82.9 percent of registered voters in Los Altos participated in the election, a higher percentage than in Mountain View, Campbell, Sunnyvale or San Mateo. (Direct comparisons were only possible in cities where there were city-specific measures on the ballot.) Fantastic!

Per Cranston’s research, Los Altos has a track record of high voter participation. In the November 2016 election, the town hit 90 percent participation, and in the previous midterm election in 2014 managed 64.5 percent, outranking its neighboring communities’ participation rates in both years.