Category: Uncategorized

photo: California Digital Library

One of the myths about Los Angeles is that in the late 1940’s a consortium of General Motors, Standard Oil and other large corporations bought up our “Red Cars” and put them out of business so that everyone would be forced to drive cars. The story is largely untrue and an excellent explantion for why it is not true can be found by clicking on “Mythology as Fact”.

There is another myth circulating around this town that is taken as fact.

Illegal immigration is responsible for every ill in the city: Traffic caused by broken down cars driven by Mexicans. Overcrowded hospitals and the health care crisis. The poor quality of our school system. Crime, drugs, and violence–all are caused by illegals.

Rarely do I hear white or non-Hispanic Californians acknowledge the responsibility that their own anti-tax fervor and reactionary politics might have caused some of our ills. Spending billions to house prisoners, keeping taxes so low that schools starve, and the obscene mess of private health care insurance and the lack of logic in not having a National Health Care system…….these are problems that we voters have brought on ourselves.

We spend hundreds of billions of dollars to establish a phony democracy in Iraq, which is surrounded by other unreformed dictatorships, and then we say we cannot cut government spending on the military. We live in an constantly impoverished domestic situation, while we endow government contractors with lucrative deals to continue waging unecessary wars around the globe.

We watch Honest Tim Russert question Honest John McCain who never answers a question honestly and then we wonder why our bi-partisan system of government is in shambles. McCain is a liar who is neither a Republican or Democrat. Yet he is treated as some sort of sage by the media. What makes him so special? His time in detention in North Vietnam? The same dishonesty and double-talk is true for Hillary Clinton. Yet we behave as if we are little children listening to our elders who tell us to keep on fighting to win a war that isn’t a war, but a never ending series of retaliations. We vote in a Botoxed movie actor action hero who is a liar and neither a Repulican or Democrat yet we think he will “reform” Collie-fornia. He hasn’t. We keep shooting ourselves in the foot and wonder why we are bleeding.

There is another myth: all soldiers are patriots and anybody who isn’t a soldier or didn’t fight in a war somehow hasn’t earned the credentials to be a true patriot. There are plenty of non-soldiers who are patriots. Some of them are called teachers, nurses, fireman, police officers and government workers. Some of these good people who vote for politicians who say they are protecting family values while they cut education and health care spending and vote more dollars for war materials and spy agencies. Some of these workers are finding that they have no money for retirement, that their pensions are non-existant, and they cannot pay for their health care. But they eventually have an answer for their ills…….

They will come back and blame our whole mess on Pedro and Maria.

It was one of those glorious winter days of strong winds, brilliant sunshine, cool temperatures and crystal clear air. In our backyard in Van Nuys, the Meyer lemon tree is finally bearing fruit in a container. Where it was previously planted, in the ground, it did not grow a single lemon. Other plants are doing well: the lavender is thriving, the white roses are blooming, the bougainvilla is preening for attention. T

We toured UCLA today with our friend Katie Malacca.

“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven. A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; a time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.”–Ecclesiastes 3:1

It’s my fantasy law: enact a $100 fine for every single missing shop cart which will be paid for by the business from whom it was stolen. If 10 carts are taken from OSH, then OSH will owe the city of Los Angeles $1,000.00 or [$100 x 10.]

In my neighborhood, we have stolen carts from: 99 Ranch Market, Sav-on Drugs, Costco, Target, Ralphs, Vons, OSH. If every single recovered cart that is taken from these stores represented a loss of $100 to each of those stores…… you can bet they would try and control them. These carts eventually end up as open air garbage bins. Along Victory, there are more shopping carts then flowers.

There is one community minded retailer in Van Nuys: Jons, on the corner of Sepulveda and Sherman Way. This scrupulously clean shopping center has magnetic strips embedded in the asphalt that prevent shopping carts from being removed from the parking lot.

Can Costco, with $880 million dollars in net profits in 2004, afford to take some action to stop the shopping cart pollution of Van Nuys? I think so.

“Imagine life in a city free from the noise, stench, and danger of cars, trucks, and buses. Imagine that all basic needs, from groceries to child care, lie within a five-minute walk of every doorstep. Imagine that no commute takes more than 35 minutes from door to door, and that service is provided by a fast, cheap, safe, comfortable public transport system. This is the future that J.H. Crawford envisions in Carfree Cities.”

Mr. Crawford also publishes an exquisite website that has thousands of photographs of European cities where the pedestrian, not the Range Rover, is king of the street. Will Los Angeles marshal its profound imagination and resources towards building a city where life is kinder and gentler or will we proceed down the ruinous path of environmental destruction and needless sprawl and time wasting?

We residents of the city of Angels live in one of the wealthiest places on Earth, but how poorly we live.

The Daily News has an article today which discusses how developers see the Busway as a new opportunity for creating multi-family housing.

Bruce Ackerman, president and chief executive officer of the Economic Alliance of the San Fernando Valley, says that air rights above the parking lots adjoining the Busway would be suitable places to construct new residential units.

The article also says, “About 19,000 people move into the Valley each year, and new housing construction, be it for-sale or for-rent, is not keeping pace with demand.”

But must new development “fit in” with pre-existing monotony and sprawl? Is urbanism something to be avoided even as we inhabit a Valley of two million?

“Channel it so it doesn’t impinge on single-family areas,’ adds Daniel Blake, director of the San Fernando Valley Economic Research Center at California State University, Northridge.”

In my neighborhood near the intersection of Sepulveda and Victory, I am currently being “impinged” by trash, an abandoned gas station, three smelly Asian restaurants, speeding cars, homeless people, a residential treatment center, graffitti, a drug user’s motel, prostitution and shopping carts.

Civilized and architecturally thoughtful multi-family housing would be welcome along the bus route. God knows we have lived next door to more horrific things in the Valley.