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You know how some people have a knack of being present while history is made, as if God meant them to be eyewitnesses? I have a knack for being in on moments that are superficially fascinating but don't amount to a hill of beans.

Especially relating to the sixties. I flew in a jet with Ravi Shankar's sitar occupying the next seat. Never laid a finger on it. I was at a press conference for Gerald Ford the day before Nixon resigned. He didn't have much to say. I met Charles Manson (I think) in the California desert in the winter of 1968. Seemed like a nice enough of a guy.

Once, during the original Patty Hearst adventure, she was rumored to passing through Minnesota. Me and a girlfriend who looked passingly like Hearst, especially through a steamed-up car window, were making out in a cornfield in Savage, and the local police shined a light into the back seat, hoping we were the famous runaways.

"Whatcha doin' in there?" the officer said.

"I lost my contacts?" I suggested. That was the only time anyone ever thought I was someone famous, or was with someone along those lines.

But this is about Kathleen Soliah of Hearst's Symbionese Liberation Army, now Sara Jane Olson of St. Paul. I know her. Rachel and I had brunch at a mutual friend's home maybe a dozen times over a 10 year period. I just don't remember her very well.

These particular friends are what you call lefties, seriously involved in causes like Cuba, Nicaragua, fighting racism and stuff like that. I think they liked Rachel more than me - she has always had impeccable do-gooder credentials. She dated a communist in the sixties in Maine, who was a union organizer at B&M Baked Beans.

Now that I think about it, I call Rachel "Red" only partly because of her hair color. Sara Jane also has red hair. Coincidence? Yeah right.

Anyway, I was always amazed people put up with me at these events, because I can entertain some pretty conservative (I prefer "regressive") notions. You should see their jaws drop when I advocate abolishing universal literacy. ("If people don't want to learn, why do we make them?" is its libertarian essence. If they just told me why, I'd probably shut up about it.)

Well, Sarah Jane and her husband were faithful members of this group. We usually brought a fruit salad, and Lori and John would cook eggs and bacon, and the other fomenters of civil disruption would make a coffee cake or blintzes or waffles. It was your basic socialist potluck.

Everyone knew Sarah Jane and Fred better than I did. I figured out from conversation she was involved in local theater. She had a regal way about her, a sort of Vanessa Redgrave air. She was very right on - but you could see she really loved her friends.

The thing about socialist breakfasts, unlike Republican breakfasts, is that Republicans tend to smile reassuringly at one another. A lot. Not our group. You say something even a little wide of the party line, and brows furrow. We were nailing one another on faint nuances of sexism and racism months before it became mandatory.

Anyway, the one thing I do remember, after all those years and all those maple syrup sausage links, was one day when they were talking about how bad corporations were. That week, a book I wrote won a big award, as best business book of 1995 - and I made the mistake of mentioning it.

It was like I had fingered the Rosenbergs. I wanted to say, hey, I'm one of the good guys. My books are about making corporations fit to work in. But I was working within the system, and I was accordingly cooked. Sara Jane gave me a look of icy regard, as if there were a banana slug on her biscotti.

I told you I wouldn't have any relevant information to add, and I don't. But I would like to say this. The people who hosted these brunches are the same folks helped Sara Jane raise $500,000 bail money, selling a cookbook titled Serving Time: America's Most Wanted Recipes. I'm proud of them.

Whatever terrible things Sara Jane might have been involved with way back then, she's a good enough person to have friends go to such lengths for her. Even if her case goes badly, and I don't think it will, my faint acquaintance has something to celebrate.