Along the 101

I'm just back from five days in San Francisco.

Thanks for having me, Norcal. You were your usual self in all the good ways.

I haven't spent a ton of time in San Francisco, truth be told. When I moved to Los Angeles almost twenty years ago, I talked myself into thinking that living in L.A. was almost as good as living in San Francisco would have been. I had read Tales of the City rather breathlessly.  The result was a certainty  that if I could get to San Francisco, it would all be just as interesting as Maupin wrote it.  It didn't matter, really, that I was to arrive 10+ years later.  Or that it was--well--fiction.

At the time I thought Los Angeles would just have to do.  No one from Norcal was beating down my grad student door.  And L.A. had called.  Offered money.  So loaded up my babyshitbrownyellow Camry and "hit the San Diego freeway doing 60 miles an hour" to quote Miss Nanci Griffith.  (Who--oddly--is playing on itunes right now.  It's another song, but still, eerie.)

I told myself that I'd go to San Francisco a lot.  I haven't, but I think sometimes about that promise I made to myself and what I thought my life was going to be like back then.

I've come to love Los Angeles.  I appreciate it, too.  I went to a concert a couple of weeks ago and the artist said, "people in New York always ask why I love L.A. with all the traffic and the freeways, and I say, 'exactly.'"  It's not about the freeways, of course.  It's about the city itself.

Anyway, I had been looking forward to this trip when I thought Honey could come.  Then she couldn't.  And it was the first week of the semester.  And then it turned out I was staying at a hotel other than the conference hotel and not particularly nearby.  All of which served to make me cross.

I decided to drive up the 101.  I couldn't take the 5 and feel ok, what with all the crossness.  I'm not sure I'll ever take the 5 to get to the Bay area again. 

California has all sorts of problems, I know this.  I'm not from here.  I know this, too. 

I thought a fair about about where I was from because I listened to The Help on CD some of the way up and all the way back.

Ok, so it's New Orleans, not Mississippi (where the book is set) or Georgia (where I'm from).  She mentions New Orleans and I'm taking a little poetic license based on the photos I just downloaded from my iPhone.

Driving to this city where I thought I wanted to be from the city where I do want to be, listening to a novel about a city that resonates with my past (or at least with my mother's) all served to be a little disorienting, in both time and space.

...

The sea lions weren't out in force to greet me. 

I always forget the damn hills, too.

Did I mention that I like Hipstamatic a lot?  I do.  Made me not want to take my regular camera. 

The conference I went to was terrible.  Not terrible in the way MLA or AAA can be.  That terrible is epic.  Shuttle buses, wide-eyed grad students, pretentious papers, really trendy girl glasses, drinking, people having sex with people they don't know, kind of terrible. 

This conference was just bad.  Boring, tedious, and talking about important stuff from 1000 miles away without acknowledging the distortion.


I stole the time I could. 

Went to the Ferry Building. 

Had Rickshaw make me an fabulously great new bag (which I deserved).  Ok, bag aside.  I promised Honey a "one-in, one-out" bag trip.  I was determined, therefore, to be deliberate about bag choices.  I started with Rickshaw.  They couldn't have been nicer.  Gave me a tour of the factory.  It's a great space.  They're committed to the right things.  Timbuk2?  Not so much.  Want to support a good SF based company all about sustainability?  Rickshaw, friends.  Rickshaw.  I got a Zero Messenger made of recycled coke bottles.

I also explored the coffee of the place.  Two words to simply your search for goodness of coffee.  You ready? You sure?

Blue


Bottle

I had good coffee elsewhere in SF and just made it to Intelligensia a week or so ago down here.  It's a good time to like coffee here on the coast of west.  Portland and Seattle are out here too, you know.  They're not bad at coffee either.

It's a great city, San Francisco.  And I need to go back more often.  The hills are not fun.  The food is great. 

It's what I wanted it to be, especially early in the morning when the fog stays thick and I could ignore the conference and walk along the Embarcadero. 

And yet, all week I wanted to come back to L.A.

I drove home on the 101 and stopped in Gilroy for lunch.  The sullen waitress and cheesy singer seemed bearable with the garlic.  As I walked back to my car after lunch, I noticed this cool old building, which had once housed the newspaper in the town.

The earthquake warning was meant to keep me away.  Instead I peered into the windows and stood and looked at it a long time.

I moved to Los Angeles just after the riots.  The earthquake happened not very long after I got here.  I moved to the "wrong" city. 

When I pulled into my driveway, my car smelling of fresh bread and coffee, I was home.  What's a little unsecured masonry among friends?

As good as my car smelled, the house smelled better.  Honey had baked me cupcakes. 

Disrupting "normal"

Living in a large city like Los Angeles and taking things for granted from the good (there's bahn mi available near my work) to the once-would-have-been-extraordinary to the now ordinary (there are also lots of Starbucks around) to the banal (how many very ordinary pharmacy chain store outlets do we need exactly?) makes it easy to be lulled into a kind of complacency. Things disappear (Chris and Pitts, for example) and things persist (Philippe's). Why am I hung up on restaurants today?

A couple of weeks ago I was at a celebration of my university's (commuter state) founders day. It was very hot (in what passes for Fall in Southern California) and we had been in the celebration tent for far too long. The speaker, when he finally arrived, was decent. He's the author of a book about the sub-region in which commuter state is located. He talked at some length about the history of the place. Much of what he said I knew, but some of it was new to me. The following weekend, Honey and I happened to be near campus and I drove her around a little telling her about the new information I now had lodged into my brain from the talk.  About the fair and the horse races and about the now disappeared football team.

I like thinking about the history of places, both recent and distant. I'm especially intrigued by that living in Los Angeles. Because I grew up in Atlanta, the places were all new and exurby. Post Sherman, Atlantans love nothing more than tearing down and redoing.

Los Angeles, on the other hand, keeps some (but not, by any means, all) of its history around. You can see Victorian homes, mid-century ranches, Greene and Greenes, missions, and new mcmansions.  There are even restaurants (see how the brain makes loops) that date back 100 years. Beef French dip, hot mustard, chili with, and a custard at Philippe's please.

I've always liked that about LA. I love our O'Keefe and Merritt brown stove with its NuTone copper hood.

 

I loved learning last week that the area our laundry room and half bath are in is properly (in SoCal) called a "service porch." And so it shall be henceforth in my mind.

Ok, so we don't live in a mid century architectural masterpiece.  No one was selling a Lautner for the mid-200s when we bought our house.  Still, it's got some fine mid century touches.  And laminate flooring.  You don't get laminate flooring in a Lautner.  Nope.

Anyway, I was thinking yesterday, while waiting in traffic about these things we don't pay attention to until it occurs to us to do so.  I was not far from commuter state, where the preserved orange groves remain and I noticed a sign waver.  Sign wavers are not an unusual sight in LA, so I looked, noted that he was holding a sign for a Halloween store and wearing a mask.  He was dancing and waving the sign, as was to be expected.  But he was also occasionally stopping his dancing and moved in a threatening manner at particular passing cars.  I'm sure he was doing this because of the scary mask he had on.  His intent was, no doubt, benign.

The effect was chilling.  Really.  I felt relieved when he did it to the car in front of mine and accelerated quickly through the intersection when the stuck traffic allowed me to.  I thought most of the way home about why he seemed so scary.  It was, I suppose, the juxtaposition of his easy dancing, the sign, the normal street corner, and these quick, sudden violent movements that kept intruding on that scene.  Normal.  Then not.

It happened that I had been at another campus in my University's system earlier that day.  I had not been to that campus before, even though it's our closest sister campus.  It, in fact, started as a satellite campus of ours.  (I am aware, by the way, that this level of detail makes figuring out which campus is which pretty easy.  Since I don't think I have many non-friend readers, I'm going to persist with the semi revelatory.  Non-California friends are welcome to ask privately for details in case you don't want to figure out which campuses are which).

Anyway, sister campus has a lovely setting.  It's in a valley, near the ocean, surrounded by mountains and touched by sea breezes.  Commuter state, on the other hand, has a hot tent.  No, let me be fair, it's a beautiful campus, just in a hot part of SoCal.

Sister campus was a long time coming and many many sites were considered.  Several of them were met by strong community opposition.  Finally they settled on the site of an about to be closed mental hospital.  A rather notorious one.

We met in sister campus' spectacular library, the only modern architecture building on campus.  It looks out across this series of smaller Spanish colonial buildings.  Some of them have been converted into office and classroom space.  Many of them sit empty, waiting to be retrofitted with modern HVAC (rather than steam heating through asbestos laden walls) and ADA compliant entrances and bathrooms.  As a colleague from sister campus said to me yesterday, "it costs a million dollars to walk into one of these buildings."

My boss and I walked around a little after the meeting and I bought Honey a t-shirt from the campus with their cheesy mascot on it.  (Not that commuter state's mascot lacks cheese-factor, mind you).



I realized that I had taken that the normal that was a quiet Friday at a small University for granted.  But somewhere in my head and in that space there were other echos.  Echos of people whose lives were trapped in that place.  Of the past that is being written over with each of the million dollar entrances into each of those unrefurbished buildings.

It's the same kind of echo that I have always tried to make myself hear on the battlefields of the Civil War.  It's easy enough to stand in Sharpsburg or Mannassas and think that Antietam and Bull Run are theoretical battles where theoretical people died.  (Speaking of the Civil War and battlefields, I cannot recommend enough the recent Slate series on touring them.  Go read it when you're done with me today).

Same building, different purpose, different era.

A lot of these building were built with New Deal money.  The Great Society indeed.

Seems innocuous enough on first glance, right?

 

As one commenter on a 2002 Los Angeles Weekly article said about this place, where he had been confined as a child:

Now and then, when I think about those days, I Google the names of the people I knew there. So far, only two staff members have shown up--and no patients. It makes me wonder whether I'm a rarity because I'm still alive. Another possibility I've considered is that they've changed their names and don't want to be found. It's hard to face the ghosts of such a twisted past without someone who shared it to reflect with.

Since I don't share that past, I can't know what that person experienced, any more than I can know what Sullivan Ballou thought as he wrote his wife before the First Battle of Bull Run, where he was killed:

But, O Sarah! If the dead can come back to this earth and flit unseen around those they loved, I shall always be near you; in the garish day and in the darkest night—amidst your happiest scenes and gloomiest hours—always, always; and if there be a soft breeze upon your cheek, it shall be my breath; or the cool air fans your throbbing temple, it shall be my spirit passing by.

Sarah, do not mourn me dead; think I am gone and wait for me, for we shall meet again.

What I do know is that when I stand in these places, rich with the sacrifices and mistakes of the past, I would do well to pay attention to that small voice echoing in my head or in the space.  I should have stopped and looked more closely.  The interactive map of sister campus has all the unrefurbished buildings in gray.  They don't "do" anything when you click on them.  But standing near them, they do speak to what was once there.  I will go back to sister campus soon and look at them again, I think.  And listen.  

I am not nostalgic for the time of service porches, copper fixtures, and steam asbestos heating. 

Things go away, sometimes, for good reasons.  Sister campus is surely and better use for that space than its previous incarnation.  Soon enough, Halloween will come and go and the guy with the mask will leave the corner.  

And we will all remember.  And all forget.

A craigslist interlude in time

Late last week I came down with yet another cold. This makes about four (maybe five) this calendar year. I'm sick (ha!) of it if truth be told, but there's not much to be done about it other than suck on zinc tablets and stay home. I've given up on trying to power through it, especially during the summer. Things are quiet enough that I can stay home and watch the celebration of Norma Shearer on TCM and the world and university will not come to a screeching halt because I'm not there. Besides, if I stay home and actually watch old movies on tv, then I don't have to sit I my office mad at myself for not being productive and I can just try to get better. This strategy basically worked. Instead of being sick for ten days, I've managed to mostly feel better by the end of day five. I also haven't needed to take much OTC medicine, which I don't like doing in some weird throw back to puritanical ancestry. (That and my Dad has always resisted OTC medicine, so my reluctance could be linked to a more recent forebearer.)

I did decide yesterday after having a bad taste in my mouth and coughing up little chunks, which turned out to be called tonsil stones, that I needed to have my tonsils out.  I haven't backed up that conclusion with any member of the medical establishment other than mayoclinic.com.

I didn't want to go anywhere yesterday and we were expecting a handyman to come fix our faulty drainage tube for the HVAC.   (Should I take a potshot at Sears? I have not been happy with Sears vis a vis our HVAC installation.  Not even a little bit.  So there.)

This conspiracy of forces (HVAC, sickness, Norma Shearer) coincided with a little craigslist focus in our house.  Last weekend, I had a fit of pique wherein I decided my customary chair was no longer the least bit comfortable and that I wanted another one.  After going to some unholy number of furniture stores, I had come to the conclusion that the only chair that might do as a replacement was an Ekornes Stressless recliner.

The problem?  They're a little spendy.  The Ekornes recliners.

Then I had a thought; why not check craigslist?  Sure enough, there was one listed for 1/4 of retail in Bell.  In case you're not wildly familiar with Southern California, Bell isn't exactly a vacation destination.  Currently in the news for wildly inflated salaries of civic employees, it's down off the I-5 in an area near, well, Commerce.  And Downey.  Yep.  That's the LA everyone knows and loves.

Nevertheless, down to Bell we go last Sunday night and I procure the chair.  The ever versatile GTI accepted it willingly into the hatch and we headed home.

(Not that there weren't any subsequent moments of concern.  I did have a near panic attack the next day that it was a fake.  Also my bank was pretty sure someone had stolen my ATM card because I kept going to the ATM to try to get money, not knowing what my daily limit was).

The chair was duly installed in the place of its predecessor, which now lives on campus at the Women's Center.  As my friend and co-worker who helped me get it over to the Women's Center noted, "they won't know it's not comfortable any more.  For them, that's how comfortable it's always been."

So, this weekend, what with the cold and the handyman, we decided to list some stuff for sale on craigslist ourselves.

On offer:

1) Two of our six bicycles.  We don't need six.  We probably don't need four.  But we certainly don't need six.

(That's the one of mine we're selling).

2)  One of my Timbuk2 bags (I admit that the pile of them in the front closet seems to consitute a collection at miniumum and an obsession if honesty is in my heart).

I have two sort of like this, briefcasey with a laptop compartment and I like the other one better.

3) My Tony Little Gazelle Elite.

You remember Tony Little right?  Screaming guy on the informercials sliding his feet back and forth on this thing?  Circa 2003 or so.  I bought it off craigslist.  Now, when I work out at home, I ride one of my bicycles (not that blue one above henceforth, to be sure).  The gazelle has been folded up, next to the hutch in our already small dining room.  It needed to go away.

4)  What Honey calls my barbie motorcycle helmet.  That "calling" goes sort of like, "it's a barbie helmet, barbie, barbie helmet."

I bought it online and didn't think it would be so, um, well, barbie.

Nice, huh?


So, we pop these things up on craigslist.  (Or should I quote "Your Mama" The Real Estalker and say we "heaved" them up on craigslist)

Honey starts getting e-mails about her bike right away.  The ratio of annoying to not was about 2/1.

I get an e-mail about the gazelle.  Could he come tonight?  He has lots of questions.

Now, it's time to tell you how much I was asking for the gazelle.  $25.  Yep.  And he was offering $20.  Which I said was fine.  But still, he had lots of questions.  I answered and tried to be nice.  He said he'd call and come get it in the morning.

He did not.

So, I listed it in the free section.  Which prompted an hysterical e-mail from a woman asking that I hold it for her.  She also called it an elliptical.  Um, no, not an elliptical.  Something you stand on and swing your legs in the air on.

Anyway, I went out to check to see if it was still there, though I was not inclined to hold it for her.  That mf was so hard to move that my shins got bruised just looking at it.  It was gone.  Probably for scrap metal.

No e-mails whatever on my bike.  It's now on ebay.  We'll see.

The Timbuk2 bag has gone back with its friends in the closet.

The barbie helmet is bound for Goodwill next time Honey goes.  (That will be this week, I'm sure).

On the upside, she does have interest in her bike, and not just from the guy who didn't want to raid his daughter's "colleg" fund.  I think she'll sell it soon.

Here are some lesson I learned:

1) My panic aside, people don't counterfeit Norwegian chairs and then try to sell them one at a time from their living room in Bell;

2) No one feel responsible for following up on their e-mails.  Civility and the social contract don't really exist on craigslist;

3) No one much uses full sentences, proper grammar, or punctuation in e-mails.  They don't even make a pretense at doing so;

4) Modelling grammar, civility, etc. for people in your communication with them will not result in their reciprocating;

5)  People are way too willing to give out their cell phone numbers;

6)  Teresa has better "taste" in bicycles than I do;

7)  Gazelles are played;

8)  Everyone has better taste than I do/did in motorcycle helmets;

9)  Everyone wants a bargain.  Perceptions of bargains are not shared across brains.

I'm glad our time with craigslist is coming to a close.  I won't miss it.

I did like the generosity of the woman who offered the fat from cooking her cats' dinner to anyone who wanted it, but wasn't sure she'd have any takers.

I suppose I can glance through that window into modern American Internet humanity now and again.  There's certainly something to learn.  Perhaps a bargain to be found.

Still and all, why do I think it's safer over at Etsy?

Water and grapefruit

I've been thinking some lately about water and the desert.

I grew up in the east, where the humidity made you wish for a little less water and a little more seersucker.

That's what roads usually looked like as I stared out the window in the cars of my childhood.

I've lived in Southern California a long time now and am still amazed at how adaptable I am to the dry.  I say that in what, admittedly,  has been a very mild summer with lots of "June gloom."  That's the marine layer hanging around the morning and keeping the afternoon cool.  Thanks so much Pacific.

I've been doing a little writing (of the academic type) lately about the "real" desert here in SoCal.

(That my paper proposal was rejected for my annual professional conference did give me pause.  I've decided to interpret it as a failure on their part, not mine.  My annual membership renewal for said society languishes in the mail basket, perhaps to go unpaid.  Oh, yeah, deny them that $100 and THEN they'll see!)

Honey and I have been frequenting an inn in Desert Hot Springs for a couple of years.  And, yes, I do mean frequenting.  Eight times in two years counts as frequent.  :)

Sigh.  We've just been back a week and I'm ready to go back.  I think the GTI has a homing beacon now.

The innkeeper, a man of considerable charm, refers to his pool and hot tub as filled by water from a "fissure."  He means, of course, that Desert Hot Springs is sitting on a big old fault in the earth.  Those tricky faults that cause all the quaking also can cause the water of spring.

Desert Hot Springs has all the water it needs and can use.  It's good water, too.  It's good to drink.  Lovely to soak in.

Elsewhere in the region, there's less water.

Looks dry.

One of my current fascinations is water of a decidedly undesirable sort in the desert.

That's the Salton Sea.  Formed by inadvertent flooding from irrigation canals in the early part of the 20th century, it was once hailed as the new playground to the stars.  Now it's a salty mess, that kills fish, smells bad, attracts shorebirds, hosts some odd communities, and just generally sits ignored (as best as people can) in the middle of the Imperial Valley south of Indio.

The kingbird probably has a better idea than the sandpipers.  Don't get in the water.

I got to thinking about water closer to home this morning.  When we bought our house eight years ago, I planted a very small grapefruit tree.  And small it stayed.  Mostly because I didn't water it.

When we did landscaping a few years ago, we had a bubbler put on it.  I thought it rebounded quite well.  Then Honey's mother pointed out that the "rebound" was what she called a "sucker plant" and not the "tree" at all.  Today, I looked outside and commented to Honey that a sucker plant had once again attached itself to the little grapefruit that couldn't.

We agreed to plant something else.

A little later in the morning, I decided to feed the backyard birds, something I've gotten a bit out of the habit of recently (for monetary reasons, mostly).  Nyjer costs.  Don't let anyone tell you it doesn't.

Everyone wants "wild canaries," but I'm here to testify that if you want goldfinches at your feeder, you got to pay for nyjer seed.  (Current price about $2/lb.)

Anyway, as I filled the feeders, I glanced at the grapefruit tree and thought, "what the hell, I'll go ahead and shovel it out today."  I figured we could replace it in the fall sometime.

So, after I put away the seed implements (bird feeding is complicated, don't you know).  Visit a Wild Birds Unlimited near you to find out just how money you could be spending!  Don't forget the nyjer is obligatory if you want the little gold ones.

I walked over to the grapefruit "tree."  Let me give you a sense of scale.

That's it on the left.  The tree (no quotes) on the right is the tangerine.  It has had many fruit every year, water or no.  Bless its over productive heart.

There's no doubt that water helps these trees.  Here's the orange tree that didn't produce more than a dozen in the non-water years.

See all those fruit?  We'll be up to our elbows in oranges again this year.

Did I mention that they're navels?  Yum.

So I'm standing over the grapefruit and I glance down.

Yeppers, those are actual grapefruits.

Water.  I tell you what.  Eight years on and the little tree that couldn't has four grapefruit on it.  And lots and lots of new growth.  I'm giving it another chance.  Redemption comes when it does, I suppose.

Now, if only it would rain.

Golf balls, National Parks, Memory, and the Newspaper

I grew up in a newspaper reading family.  Even as a child, I liked reading the newspaper.  We got the afternoon paper most of my childhood and then switched to the morning paper when I was a teenager.  Let's pause for a moment and think about that.  Morning paper.  Afternoon paper.

Yep.

I grew up in Atlanta and the two papers were co-owned in my lifetime.   Of course, they had been separate newspapers once upon a time.  Though co-owned, they maintained separate newsrooms through 1982 and maintained separate editorial boards through 2001.    The Journal was liberal.  The Constitution was not.



Now the combined Atlanta Journal-Constitution, according to my Dad, who reads it every day, is "terrible."  It's delivered once a day (morning) and focuses on local news.  My parents get the New York Times every day as well.  They're newspaper readers and getting the Times means they still get a real newspaper.

I went through a period of not reading the paper much.  I read Salon and Slate, checked the Los Angeles Times web site when there are wildfires, watched Rachel Maddow with Teresa sometimes, and listened to NPR most of the time.  I figured I was getting my news.  I never gave up the Sunday paper thing, though.  I always read the Sunday paper, even as it got gutted.  No more Book Review, no more Opinion, no more Magazine.

I've been lucky, in my adult life, to live in cities with decent papers.  The Washington Post does pretty well.  The Los Angeles Times has something to say most days.  I moved away from Washington before the decline of the newspaper.  I am certainly not qualified to speak on the newspapers' decline in any expert way.  There are those far more in the know who I have asked about the situation (folks who teach or taught journalism at my University, for example) who just shake theirs heads when I ask about the future.

And, of course, the future looks bleak.  The LA Times runs large number of corrections every day because they've fired their fact checkers and copy editors.  One day last year, their Calendar briefs had stand-in headlines that read "sub head here" printed instead of the actual sub head.

For a while I was getting the Thursday-Saturday papers for free and paying $1.25 a week for the Sunday paper because every time I tried to cancel, they'd offer me a better deal to keep me as a single number on the subscriber list.

Lately, though, I'm glad to get the LA Times.  It may not be the great paper it was even ten years ago, but they employ a number of writers and critics I really like.  I would read anything Dan Neil writes about anything.  Mr. Neil, here's a box of hair, please write about it and I will read it.

I even sent Neil an e-mail some years ago praising his review of a car Chevrolet (the SSR) put out that was supposed to look like it had been chopped and altered.  Neil's take on the difference between mass-manufacture and art was one of the best things I've ever read about folklore.  I told him so by e-mail and have used the piece in my class.  He, in turn, worried in his e-mail response to me about what happens when a writer's writing makes it into a college class.  Does he lose his edge?   Even recounting the incident here now makes me happy.

I always read Susan Carpenter (who they should let review motorcycles again).  I like Robert Lloyd and Ken Turan.  Mary McNamara and Sandy Banks.  Steve Lopez.

The paper may have had the great short-sightedness to fire its copy editors and fact checkers (surely a necessary group of folks).  I am glad they kept some  of the people they did.  And so I read it Thursday through Sunday.  I'm not looking to it for the latest news any more.  I'm looking for in-depth reporting.  Good writing.  Stuff I didn't know.

I guess an aside is worth making about the other daily Los Angeles paper, The Daily News.  I don't read it, but one of the reporters calls me a lot to be a quoted expert.  I'm sure it says something about the self-absorption of the city and time in which I live when I say I always look those articles up online to see if I sound good in the quotes.

All this lead-up brings me to the piece they ran on page A3 in yesterday's (9/18/09) Los Angeles Times Valley edition by David Kelly.  I won't hotlink, since at some point it won't be available any more, but here's the first paragraph:

"A man claiming he was paying tribute to dead golfers tossed up to 3,000 golf balls into the biggest sand trap he could find: Joshua National Park."





Yes, indeed.  That right there is why the paper is worth reading.  This item didn't go viral on the internet (maybe because it didn't involved Kanye West).  It didn't get picked up by NPR because it's a little too long for a quip and doesn't have the pathos needed for a feature.  Rachel Maddow didn't mention it.  Salon and Slate didn't cover it.  I read about it in the newspaper.  The same daily print newspaper that had a very interesting piece from Neil about Diesel/Electric hybrids (want!), an hilarious panning of the Matthew Modine play making its world premiere at the Taper, a good review of both The Burning Plain and Bright Star, as well as a bad one of The Informant! (Very helpful--I now will not go see it).

I also read an interesting piece about why the NFL is helping the Washington football team keep its racist name and an obituary of Frank Coghlan, Jr. who played Billy Batson in the Captain Marvel serial.  (Shazam!)  Just so you know, Southerners read the obits.  Every day.  There was also a well-done (and scary) feature by Richard Fausett on the Oath Keepers.

To get back to the golf balls, I read every word of the story.  Twice.  Thought I should tell Teresa about it.  Thought I should say something on Facebook about it.  Then, I decided to blog about it.  Because, of course, my connection to and fascination with the story was about more than the golf balls in the National Park.  It was about why newspapers should still matter.  Do still matter.  It's good to slow down, read the paper.  Think about it.  Talk about it.  It's also good to listen to NPR, read the web, follow blogs, tweet (I suppose, though I'm not yet convinced).  None of these things have to be either/or zero sum things.

Quoting again from Kelly's piece, wherein park rangers noted that the golf balls had some tennis balls mixed in, he writes:  "Rangers also found cans of fruit and vegetables left in the desert along with park literature tossed around."

According to Ranger Joe Zarki, Jones [the accused] spread the golf balls around the park, "'to honor all the golfers who had died.'"

"Contrary to what rangers originally though, Jones wasn't chipping golf balls into the desert with a club.  He was hurling them from his car."  Mr. Kelly, you've got me hooked.  Tell me more, please.

"Jones was unavailable for comment Thursday.  He lives with his 84-year-old father, Douglas, who didn't know about the incident until a reporter called him.  'It certainly sounds strange,' said his father.  'He hikes out in Joshua Tree every three months or so, and he golfs maybe once a week.  But I don't know where he got that many golf balls.'  He did, however, say that his son works at a local golf course."

Well done Mr. Kelly.  Well done LA Times.

Support your local newspaper.  It may be dying, it's certainly flawed, but it's still worth having around.

Now, about afternoon delivery...

Serial carogamous

"Am I obsessed with justifying this decision?"  I asked Honey.

"Every human want to justify her decisions.  It's what makes us human," was her reply.

I had noted that I would be glad not to have to worry about the size of open parking places in the really impacted Whole Foods parking lot.  This was after saying early this very afternoon, that I would be glad:

1) Not to have to worry about the enormous blind spots on the FJ

2) Not to get 18 mpg

3) Not to have my car mistaken for a Hummer ever again

I may have come up with another thing or two or three.  Or eleven.

You see, friends and blogreaders, it's a mere three years after procuring my Toyota FJ Cruiser and enduring the summer of 08, where filling it up was a $65-75 endeavor that had to be done every 300 miles (or fewer).  Usually fewer.  And my time with the FJ is drawing to a close.  Not because I leased it.  Not because there's anything wrong with it.  But because I just can't deal with it any more.  I've got other reasons.  I'll throw some around now:

I've been furloughed from work two days a months with an accompanying 10% pay cut.  I would like my car to be cheaper.

It has faux-suicide doors and very few adults want to get into its back seat.

It will need new tires in the next six months and that will cost $1000 or more and I still won't be able to change them by myself, given how large they are.

Gas is back up over $3.00 a gallon.

Americans still want "cute" SUVs and the FJ is cute.  And newish.  And retro.  Someone will want it.  It still has value.

I don't like having to hoist up into it.

I would like to make less impact on the environment.  It qualified for Cash for Clunkers.  A 2007 vehicle.  Seriously.

I know, by the by, that someone else will buy it and use it and they will make an impact on the environment with it.  That will be partially my fault.  I'm ok with that.

Ok, see what I mean about justifying what I want to do?  A lizard brained serial carogamous, I am.

Anyway, all of which is to say, I put a deposit down on a 2010 VW Golf TDI.  Clean Diesel.  40mpg.  German made, just like my Passat of yore.  $1300 tax break.

It won't be here until December or January.  In the meantime, though, I'm a little obsessed.  In a good way.  Want to see what it will look like?!



That one is British, but it's the color I ordered.

We had our usual terrible time with car dealers trying to get one ordered.  We went to test drive the Jetta TDI (same engine) to make sure I liked it and to order one.  It's not even worth going into much detail about how much both dealers we visited did sucketh.  Van Nuys VW and Livingston VW both refused to take my order, had marked up the TDI cars above MSRP, and said that the dealers who would take orders were "lying."   Commonwealth VW has my business in buying the car for sure.   Some car advice:

1) Do your research on the interwebs before you go

2)  Walk away from people who call you "ma'am" in a condescending way and

3)  Always always always always bring Teresa.

Then you'll be fine.

More details to come, I'm sure.  Vroom (in a clean diesel way).

The Bean in the Seat

When I was little, my parents had a succession of cars with which they were largely unsatisfied.  There was much lamentation about the sold VW Beetle--replaced by the unsatisfying AMC Rambler.  They replaced the Beetle because I was born.  The purchase of the Rambler was my fault.  So was the collapse of AMC.  You heard it here first.

The Rambler, in turn, was replaced by a VW 412 which overheated a lot.  The VW was replaced by a Buick Electra Limited, a behemoth whose soft steering was my comfort as I was I learning to drive.  Its landau top was forever the source of family drama because of the sparkler thrown onto it by my brother after an explicit warning not to throw sparklers.

I should note that this car lament/blame had a parallel in a story about the cat who died, because she was let out onto the busy street and run over.  As I was weeks old at the time, it was not I (in the Electra) who ran her down.  It was, nonetheless, my fault.  I was said to be the source of her "freedom" because the African-American woman who helped my mother care for me as an infant had warned that cats will "suck the life out of babies."  Thus, cat outside on busy road, and a bad end.

Anyway, back to the cars.

Got the sequence?



Gave way (because of me) to:



Which wasn't a good car, caused the downfall of AMC (my fault), and was replaced by:



Which overheated a lot.  Did I mention that my brother and I didn't get along as children?  Thusly, one of us had to ride in the "way back" over the overheating engine one summer on a trip from Atlanta to New England.  I can still remember how hot I was.  Hotbox was replaced by:



There were more cars later, including the unfortunate car that became my first (handed down from my mom) and therefore the subject of my early driver accidents...



Have you ever noticed that certain cars never make people wistful for the past?  No one longs to have a fully restored 1980 Chevrolet Citation.  And that is why GM is failing.  You heard it here first.

Anyway...

Between the 412 and the Electra, my dad bought a used car, which he drove for six or nine months.  My excellent internets-based sleuthing has led me to the conclusion that it was a mid-70s Toyota Corona.  (I knew it was a Toyota, I knew approximately when we had it, and then I recognized it while looking at google images of mid-70s Toyotas.  See how clever I am?!)

That Toyota--while otherwise an ordinary car--had one extraordinary feature to my school-age mind.  The headrests of the front seats had openings into which the poles slid.  They functioned fine and the headrests were firmly attached.  Nevertheless, into one of these very small holes, someone had placed a dried bean.



Like that one in the middle there.  I saw very clearly how the bean could have been inserted.  Getting it out was another matter.

I could not, for the life of me, sort out how it might be extracted.  I spent hours contemplating.  I really wanted to figure it out.  Then, my dad sold the car and the bean was gone from my life.  I still thought of it occasionally for years.  The problem I could not solve.  The void filled with bean.

I thought about that bean today.

We spent yesterday with Teresa's parents and their three dogs and our two dogs.  They have a small dog along with whom Biscuit does not get.  (Did you follow that?)  Anyway, Biscuit got into a fight with that dog and as a result, she smelled a little like the pee that dog emitted as a result of the fight.  I should note that non-Biscuit dog started the fight and I later said, "Lulu wrote a check she couldn't cash."  As a result of Lulu's check, Biscuit smelled like Lulu pee.  Oh and chocolate chip cookies.  She smelled like pee and chocolate chip cookies.  We had a fresh chocolate chip cookie in the car on the way home (a result of a coupon at Black Angus.  Don't ask).  So my car smelled of dog, urine, and cookie.

I was taking Biscuit to get groomed this morning.  I was traveling to a part of SoCal I generally avoid.  Biscuit's groomer had moved from a store in the valley in which I live to another north of here.  I programmed my Garmin Nüvi with the address and set out.  When I arrived in far northern valley, I discovered that the store was on a new bit of road that wasn't known to the Nüvi.  I got lost.  I found myself staring at the Nüvi, which was showing my car in a blank space on the map.



It looked like that except there were no roads.  I stopped the car and looked at it.  The Nüvi said I was nowhere.  And yet, I was somewhere.

The where was new space--not in a good sense, mind you.  There I was driving down a new road lined with faux-Spanish facade built around all the expected national chain stores.  Ex-urbs have no soul and may well be the reason for the bad economy.  You heard that here first.

But Biscuit likes Harvey and Biscuit doesn't like many people and Harvey had moved to the PetSmart at the place unknown to the Nüvi.

All of a sudden, staring at my virtual car in a virtual wasteland, I thought of the bean.  I also thought of my nine year old self staring at the bean, trying to get it out of the void.

Then I looked up.  Away from the blank, away from the bean.

I found the store and took Biscuit inside.

(Why does Biscuit's hair cut cost twice as much as mine?  Never mind, I know.  It's because I don't nip and my hairdresser doesn't brush my teeth).

Normally, when I defy the Nüvi's directions, she says "recalculating" in a way I find judgmental.  Today, as she tried to find her way through the blank space, I found her recalculations less judgmental and more bereft.  She seemed (not that I'm anthropomorphizing AT ALL) relieved when I headed home.

When left to pick up Biscuit, I turned the Nüvi back on and directed her back to the blank space. Biscuit didn't smell like pee anymore.  The blank space is now filled in my mind by the exubry stuff that's actually there.

I was listening to Carrie Newcomer as I descended back to the valley that is my home.

I'm the fool whose life's been spent.
Between what's said and what is meant

Or so she sang.

That bean is surely gone now.  Dessicated enough to dry up and blow up and away from its void.  Maybe it's still there.  It's not a problem I need to solve.

So I will wander without fail
In circles that grow ever wide
The sky expands and then exhales...

When I arrived home, the Nüvi said, "arriving at home, on right."  We both felt glad.

(Lyrics from The Geography of Light by Carrie Newcomer, "There is a Tree")

Mallomars

Essentially lifted from Facebook...

I was doing one of those 25 things things.  I never do memes on the blog, why I did one on Facebook, well, I dunno.  I have NOT done any of the follow-up memes.  48 things, etc.

Anyway, here was things #23: I once got "stranded" on a rock in the former Yugoslavia (when it was still Yugoslavia). My friends and I made our way into town and I bought and ate some mallomars. They tasted better than any cookie ever had before or since.

___________________________________________________________________________________

A friend asked for more info on what had happened.  Here's my response.  I should note that I have now corrected my spelling of the cookie in question.  It's Mallomar.  I'm going to maintain that it should have a w, but acknowledge that it doesn't.

My response:

In the late 1980s, I traveled with friends from Italy, up through Austria, and down into Yugoslavia. The train to Zagreb was fine, the train from Zagreb to Split was not.

Once we arrived in Split, we explored the city and decided to take a ferry one day to Hvar, an island off the coast. We were the only Americans, probably the only English speakers, and certainly the youngest people of the ferry. The ferry arrived at a rock. It opened itself up and we got off. Everyone else drove off in cars or was picked up. The ferry closed and started back to Split. There we were standing on the rock.

There was NOTHING there. Alone.

Off in what looked like an impossible distance to travel was a town. We climbed up the road and down into the town (it wasn't actually very far). It turned out to be a pleasant resort town, largely closed for the winter (it was March). We wandered around, found a small grocery store. I bought the best Mallomars ever. When we saw the ferry headed back toward us, we walked back to the rock.

In our exploration of the town, we found a path along the harbor that got us back to the rock without having the climb the road/hill. We arrived as the ferry did and boarded it back to Split.

That night we had goulash, and the following night we took the overnight ferry to Bari.

It was that moment on the rock. I wanted to jump in the Adriatic and swim down the ferry.

That and the Mallomars.

Really? A grocery store? Yep.

So, it's been a bit.  And I got married.  And I have a new job which is interim and I'm hoping will be permanent in a couple of months.  It's really hard and I work a lot and am tired a lot.

Also, We got our yard done and lots of work on the interior of the house.  Did I mention we got married?  Oh, and then there's that whole election bidness in a couple of days.  No on 8, k?

But, friends, I'm here for a short while today to speak about a grocery store.  Yes sir.  Yes ma'am.  All those other things, they take time and thought and care.  This is just about happy in the 'hood.

I'm not the first to notice.  Sandra Tsing Loh, who I would probably follow into the fiery pits of hell should she ask, noticed. Twice.

I don't know where Loh lives in the part of the Valley she refers to as "The Nuys" to give it new cache.  But I'm close to Fresh and Easy.  Remarkably close.

Today, my spouse slash wife (of two weeks) slash partner (of fourteen years) and I went there.  Oh it is a bright place.  With Jam.  And chips that taste like Doritos.  Except, and here is the clincher, they're SPINACH and ARTICHOKE kinda-Doritos.  Maybe I should have told you to sit down before I told you that.

It occupies a space that used to be a Ralphs.  Not a good Ralphs.  just a ralphs.  It's not any longer.  Soy milk.  Fresh fruit.  Teeny pies.

It may not be love, but color me intrigued.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you...

Fresh and Easy



It's a neighborhood market.  In my neighborhood.  My my.

Hugs and kisses and lots of foons,

Sporks.

Tiki room (and related) thoughts

On Tuesday, Honey and I decided to play hooky. There simply isn't a better place for playing hooky than Disneyland. Imagine your eight year old self. You want a day off. You want to do something superveryfun. What could be more superveryfun than Disneyland? Sex. But you're supposed to be imagining your EIGHT year old self. If you thought about sex a lot then, I don't want to know about it.

Theoretical fingers in theoretical ears... Lalalalalalalalalalalalalala Done with eight year old sex thoughts.


Ok, I won't give you a whole travelogue, but here's a highlight/thought list.

*They can dress it up all they want, but Innovations (in Tomorrowland)=superverylame.

*The redo of Space Mountain is awesome. It seems faster and you can't see the track any more. It's like a roller coaster in space. Wait, it IS a roller coaster in space.

*Disneyland rides with pictures they take and then try to sell you do NOT take flattering pictures of me. Nope.

*This image is funny and is on almost every ride. I kept trying to be these people. My body won't do the things it suggests.



*Cynthia, who was having a birthday and brought her coffee onto Thunder Mountain in the pouring rain, reminded me of how great people can be. I don't even know her and we rode behind her on the ride for all of three minutes. Still, she and her friend Susan rocked.

*As a child, I was DEEPLY disappointed to have spent one of my E-tickets on 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (aka the submarines). The 35 minute wait we experienced on Tuesday did not improve my liking of it a lot. It was ok, but it was the longest wait of the day.



*I kind of loved (actually really loved) the Tiki Room. I'd never been there before. Full props to Disneyland for not tearing it out. It would not have been worth an E-Ticket, though.

*Fewer full props to them for tearing out the gallery above New Orleans Square for the new luxo-suite. I did like the Disney employee at the "Disneyana" store who described the gallery space as "having moved on to its next life." She did this all why I dripped onto the rug, having gotten soaked in the rain on Big Thunder.

*We didn't bottom out our Small World boat! I'm also pleased to report that Small World is less annoying at the holidays, because they intersperse Christmas songs with the eponymous song. I'm not a fan of either, but less of both overall makes it more bearable.

*I was pleased to do Tomorrowland first. Why we always do Adventureland first is beyond me. I'm a big T-land fan, Innovations notwithstanding.

*Bring back the People Mover.



*Indiana Jones has gotten more jerky. Panic attack inducing jerky.

* I know, I know, SOMETHING has to make you want to go to California Adventure, but why oh why can't Tower of Terror be in D-land? I heart it but not enough to pay $20 more to ride it.

*I wish we had parked on the Daisy level instead of the Mickey level. I've never much cared for the mice. The ducks, I like.

*La Casa Garcia has really good albondigas. Really good albondigas tastes especially good when you're wet.

*I would say I need a rain coat, but I live in Southern California.

*The best part of the day? All of it, of course. What's not to like? A day with my Honey at Disneyland.

I like my inner eight year old sometimes. She has good ideas.  Besides, my outer 39 year old can afford to buy her extra E-Tickets.

At the tiki, tiki, tiki, tiki room...

Leaning

So I was in my vehicle yesterday waiting to turn left. I glanced over at the cars turning right onto the street I was on. It's a normal Valley street. Big intersections, plenty of room. There are advantages to living in the quintessential post-War environment. 1950s car were big and so our streets are wide.



This 1953 Studebaker, for example, was 20 feet long. And it's a coupe. My FJ, just for comparison, is about 15 feet long. A Prius is about 14 feet. Big cars of the 50s meant big streets. Frank Lloyd Wright said we needed it, you know.

Anyway, I was watching these folks turn right and I noticed they were all leaning over as the turned. How odd, I thought. Then I turned left and realized that I, too, had leaned. Not as much as the people I was watching, but I still leaned.



Now, while I'm sure we all like to keep our equilibrium, it got me to thinking...how important is it to stay upright at all times? It's not like you're going to fall over in the car. And, really, if you are going to fall over in the car, you have a lot more to worry about the simple uprightness.

So, here's the question--are you a car leaner? If so, why? Be honest and share out in comments.