Better Than Dead

And the river we have lost

Three centuries ago, the river meandered this way and that through a dense forest of willow and sycamore, elderberry and wild grape. Its overflow filled vast marshlands that were home to myriad waterfowl and small animals. Steelhead trout spawned in the river, and grizzly bear roamed its shores in search of food. So lush was this landscape and so unusual was it in the dry country that the river was a focus of settlement long before the first white man set foot in the area. Indians relied on the river and the adjacent woodlands for food and the raw materials from which they made almost everything else. They built their villages near the river and bathed each morning in its waters. When the first European visitors passed through the area in the eighteenth century, more than two dozen Indian villages lined the river’s course to the sea. The first white visitors, Spanish explorers in search of possible sites where they could establish missions, were also drawn to the river. They marveled at its beauty, named it after a cherished religious site near their homeland, [La Porciúncula], and noted the potential of the gardenlike setting for settlement…

from The Los Angeles River: Its Life, Death, and Possible Rebirth by Blake Gumprecht

Here’s what it looks like now:

What killed this gardenlike river? Floods and water rights. The Los Angeles River was a wild one, prone to flooding in the rainy season and in the spring. Here’s what it looks like when it’s flooding:

As the city grew, the river breaching it’s banks and taking out homes and businesses could not be tolerated—rightly so. So they channeled it. Which wouldn’t have killed it off completely, but the other side effect of L.A.’s growth was its thirst. Soon water supplied from the river wasn’t enough to slake that thirst so they started pumping it directly out of the underground aquifer that was the river’s lifeblood.

Even that wasn’t enough after a time. They siphoned off the Colorado River and…well, did you ever see the movie, Chinatown? Old Mr. Mulholland devised a plan to pump the lakes in central California, too.

And the Los Angeles River? Became mostly a sewage channel except for those flooding times in the winter and spring.

There is some hope. People have begun to care about the river and its future. Friends of the Los Angeles River, among others, got the EPA to designate the L.A. River as a navigable waterway, which helps protect in under the Clean Water Act. There are plans for redevelopment and some really nice before and after pictures here.

And parts of it have come back somewhat, tended to and allowed to be semi-wild, like this stretch of the Glendale Narrows:

But L.A is broke, the state of California is broke, and our new old governor Jerry Brown has decided to take back the money from redevelopment projects all across the state. Who knows if we’ll ever get our river back?

From The Onion:

“What begins as a Kafkaesque ordeal, will soon turn into an Orwellian nightmare, before unexpectedly becoming a Judy Blume-ish disaster.”

Random quote of the day:

“Are you really sure that a floor can’t also be a ceiling? Are you absolutely certain that you go up when you ascend a staircase? Can you be definite that it is impossible to eat your cake and have it?”

—M. C. Escher, “On Being A Graphic Artist,” introduction to 29 Master Prints

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“Nobody, as long as he moves about among the chaotic currents of life, is without trouble.”

—attributed to Carl Jung

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

And then there’s this:

Either I’m writing too much blog or not enough.  Where’s the balance?

Since I haven’t anything important going on today I decided I might as well post chapter 2 of The Numberless Stars on OWW.  27 Jan

Doctors: you can’t live with them and you can’t live without them. 27 Jan

Think I nailed down chapter 2, or at least good enough that I can progress to chapter 3 with a clean conscience and wait for revisions. 26 Jan

And so to lunch and the third try to nail the opening of chapter 2 of The Numberless Stars. 26 Jan

RETWEET: StephenAtHome Stephen Colbert by pj_thompson: I don’t want Sharia Law messing with our constitution! That’s the job of Scalia Law. 25 Jan

A word of warning: do not type “scars” into Google Images if you have eaten recently. 25 Jan

The Social Wetwork: An Assassin’s Dating Service #comingsoon 25 Jan

Life is a perpetual field of banana peels. You just never know when you’re going to step wrong. 24 Jan

Random quote of the day:

“You send books out into the world and it’s very hard to shuck them out of the spirit.  They are tangled children, trying to make their way in spite of the handicaps you have imposed on them.  I would give a pretty to get them all back home and take one last good swing at every one of them.  Page by page.  Digging and cleaning, brushing and furbishing.  Tidying up.”

—John D. MacDonald, introduction to Stephen King’s Night Shift*

*No, I didn’t leave a word out.

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“It is easy to display a wound, the proud scars of combat.  It is hard to show a pimple.”

—Leonard Cohen, “The Favorite Game”

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Back way back when I was a pre-teen and teen I adored Dr. Pepper. I could not get enough of it and used to guzzle (my mother’s word) the stuff all day long. I have the fillings to prove it, which is why, sometime during high school to save my teeth I swapped my allegiance from Dr. P and other sugary soft drinks to coffee. I say this as if I made the decision all on my own, but my mother and dentist—mostly my mother—made a big deal out of this. Once I stopped guzzling the sugared stuff I mostly stopped having rotten teeth, so I guess it was the right move.

Before I went cold-turkey, I used to plan my trips home from school around my Dr. P addiction. If I caught the bus right outside the school, it left me off on Main Street, about two blocks from my house and not in easy striking distance of a market. But if I walked about 4-5 blocks west from the school to Lincoln Blvd., caught the Lincoln bus to Rose Avenue and walked the 4-5 blocks home from there, I had access to two markets. On the walk up, I’d stop into the little Mom & Pop store on Venice Blvd. for a hit of Dr. P to drink at the bus stop. Then on Rose Avenue, I’d visit Escalera’s market, another Mom & Pop I’d been going to since I was a little girl (when it was still Dumont’s), before completing the one and a half blocks home. I always made sure to buy an extra Dr. P so I could drink it in the evening after dinner.

The thing is, the Dr. Pepper was part of it, maybe the initial motivator, but really I loved those walks. Sometimes I went with another “friend” who lived close to my neighborhood, but mostly I walked alone because I preferred the freedom of my imagination and the luxury to observe, over making inane conversation with a girl I had little in common with and didn’t like that much (and who didn’t care that much for me). So we’d do our best to avoid each other at the end of the school day and go our separate ways. And that was just as it should be. I could take my beloved walk in peace.

*This little guy is not on permanent display in my room—in fact, this little guy has long since gone on to a better life in recycling—but it was there in my room and sparked a memory chain, so I took a picture of it.

This post is really about walking.

(more…)

Random quote of the day:

“You can’t—sometimes I think you shouldn’t even try to—change people’s minds.  It just gets their backs up.  Better to put the information out and let them deal with it in their own way, on their own time.”

—Charles de Lint, Spirits in the Wires

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

I do plan on writing a real blog post again some day—I’ve been cogitatin’ in that general direction—but things have been rather hectic.  The blog still resides mostly in my brain.

Otherwise, the penne with tomatoes, basil, and Italian turkey sausage was splendid. :-/  24 Jan

As was reinforced for me in last night’s dinner: there’s a fine line between carmelizing your onions and burning them. 24 Jan

Chocolate chocolate chip muffin you are mine! I’m sure we’ll be so happy together. Until I eat you (not in a good way). 24 Jan

Jack Lalanne’s motto (as stated at 95): “If man made it, don’t eat it. If it tastes good, spit it out.” Yeah. Right. 24 Jan

Perspective is everything I say. 23 Jan

Cable guy here to see about the horrible tragedy of no modem. 23 Jan

TMI? Mom: Who pooped on the paper? Bird: Bird. 23 Jan

Go Jets! 23 Jan

Too much singing for Min, though. She left the room. 22 Jan

I loved it, but then, I’m a romantic slop bucket. Acting was much better than I expected. Good thing they didn’t let Pierce sing much tho. 22 Jan

All right, I confess. I’m about to watch Mamma Mia. 22 Jan

Fortunately utter tragedy has been avoided because of Mr. Droid. I call him Edwin when it’s just us. 22 Jan

This afternoon my modem went bellyup. No bigscreen internet until at least tomorrow afternoon. So stunned to get a service call so fast. 22 Jan

That was supposed to be “but bwoogity. We’re wimps” but spellcheck is cursed. 22 Jan

This morning we took Bird to have her toenails clipped and her beak Dremeled. We could do this ourselves but velocity. We’re wimps. 22 Jan