Uncategorized – Page 16 – Here in Van Nuys

Dirty Air Blues.

October 26, 2007Posted in UncategorizedLeave a comment

The polluted air from the 16 wildfires is all around us, and most of us are feeling miserable. I have had watery eyes, fatigue, chest pain, and a hacking cough.

Sometimes the particulates are invisible, but today, stepping out of an office building near Universal City, I could see and smell the burned leaves and wood from the conflagrations.

There is nothing we can do about it, we unfortunates with lungs. There is the usual advice to stay inside and turn on the air-conditioning. Supposedly, it will take several days for the smoke to dissipate.

You can’t even drive to the beach for relief. The air is filthy everywhere, and there isn’t a section of the Southland that is not affected.

Is Your Geeky Lifestyle Affecting Your Health?

October 25, 2007Posted in UncategorizedLeave a comment

Story on how computer users suffer more headaches, sleeping problems, back aches, etc.

Experiment in Living.

October 23, 2007Posted in UncategorizedLeave a comment

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California Fire, originally uploaded by cnynfreelancer.

When we lived in NJ, we had a house near the woods.

Sometimes deer would come out of there, or maybe raccoons. Before it rained, we would sit on the front porch under the overhang and watch the trees blow as the storm approached.

There was never any interaction with nature that seemed threatening, but living in Southern California, now that the fire season and its catastrophic consequences have again surrounded us, I wonder anew why we choose to live in a such a hostile place.

If I had a California house in the mountains or next to undeveloped open space, I would worry about snakes and lions, mudslides and of course, fires. Those strange houses, the ones that are built with steel fencing and sit on terraced slopes, in a hostile arrangement with the natural world… that isn’t for me. I don’t drive through Orange County or Santa Clarita and envy people who live in communities where thousands of units were erected in months by developers who tamed and destroyed the very wildness they claim to respect.

The people who serve and protect and lay their lives on the line so that millions can live in air-conditioned stucco boxes with three car garages in the midst of aridity, are their lives less important than the Range-Rovers and TVs and stuffed animals they are sworn to defend?
There is a criminal waste of resources to allow and insure that development is possible anywhere. And a moral lapse in seeing fireman perish fighting the inevitable.

And now that the fires are back, the very fragility of the human experiment in the Golden State is back in the news. We are the uninvited guests in these parts, and no matter how many rivers we encase in concrete, or how many fireproof roofs are built, and whatever brush is cut back, the arsonist and the falling power line, and lightning itself will ignite the fury that is nature and we will run away from paradise, quicker than we arrived.

Bush To Request Additional $46 Billion For Wars

October 22, 2007Posted in Uncategorized1 Comment

Today, “President Bush will ask Congress for another $46 billion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and finance other national security needs.” The figure “brings to $196.4 billion the total requested by the administration for operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere for budget year that started Oct. 1.”

Urban Planning Ideas.

October 12, 2007Posted in Uncategorized1 Comment

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De Weaze, Red Light District, Leeuwarden, originally uploaded by jacco de boer.

O.K. so this actually called “De Weaze, Red Light District, Leeuwarden” in the Netherlands. But what attracted me to this photo was the rhythm and style of these buildings along a canal.

It could be adopted along the LA river to create walking areas and pedestrian activity in a formerly forlorn place. I know they are currently building parks along the Studio City stretch of the LA River, but there are many, many concrete wastelands left to develop and this is one idea to consider.

I would of course keep the parks, but build these type of canal homes along the river. Shops on the ground floor, residential on top. What we need more of……