we who live in northeastern LA, are still without full power. highland park, eagle rock, echo park, silverlake, glassel park, el sereno, and a few other neighborhoods. a major receiving station that serves the area is still not operating at full capacity. looks like it might be sunday night before everything is fully restored. it's nice to be without the television! but i do miss the heat. i figured out last night that i could use the wireless router and my laptop for internet. a brownout is way better than a blackout!
my neighbor directly across the street has a giant uprooted pine which crashed down all around her house. i'm thinking, perhaps mistakenly so, that the native oaks in my yard have a very deep root system that is keeping them anchored.
small inconveniences. nothing serious.
and i do like pulling out jars and having clusters of flickering firelight everywhere. i lit the candles again before dawn and waited for the sun. this morning i'm going to begin replanting the big epiphylums. off to the nursery when it opens to rustle up some new pots!
hurricane force winds wrapped around little moss cottage last night. roof tiles were flying, giant precious epiphylum pots were crashing, trees up and down the street & throughout the city were uprooted (thankfully my giant oaks and other trees are okay). electricity was out overnight. me and the cat posse hunkered down and bit our nails.
fortunately i didn't lose a single tree or rain gutter. my neighbors weren't so lucky! i taped my french windows shut with red duct tape because they kept blowing open and scaring the cwap out of all 3 of us.
i seriously considered crawling into the closet, but stayed put in the bed and hoped the roof wouldn't blow off. it didn't! which one of you hid my nerve pills? guess will open a bottle of liquid courage instead.
more epic windstorms blowing this way once darkness falls. i'm off to batten down the hatches!
I bought my first computer in 1997. It was used, a Macintosh. About 5 years old. I think I paid a few hundred bucks for it. Over the years I upgraded many times, each time buying a used Mac. Finally in 2005 or so I got my first brand new computer- the IMac. Steve Job's Think Different campaign from the mid-90's was always my favorite. I loved seeing the giant iconic billboards splashed all over LA.
I tracked down Steve Job's commencement speech he gave at Stanford. When he died this past week, I wanted to read every word of it. This is my favorite piece. I put it in my journal for safekeeping. Big thoughts from a beautiful mind...thinking different to the end.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
Diptychs from Dottie and I. I bet you can tell whose is whose.
An interesting day in the classroom with the craft monkeys. One of them informed me that tooth fairies use teeth for money instead of money money. They also apparently use teeth in place of bricks to build houses, whole cities even.
A person could work for years, a lifetime even, with grown-ups and never learn half the things you can learn from a kid.
Many people read and responded to the LA Times article I spoke of yesterday. I was so relieved to get this email from the reporter:
Hi Mary Ann -- Thanks for your note. Things have changed dramatically since Friday's story about Bessie Mae Berger and her sons was published. It prompted responses by agencies from the city, the county and the state that are now looking for long-term solutions to their situation. For the short-term, a privately funded nonprofit organization has found temporary housing for the three in an assisted-living facility. No fund has been established to benefit them, although operators of a Venice center have set up a mailing address for those interested in directly contacting Bessie and her sons. It is:
Larry Wilkerson, c/o Westside Center for Independent Living, 12901 Venice Blvd., Los Angeles, Ca. 90066. We will publish a follow-up story in The Times. Thanks again, - Bob
I know the plight of the homeless here in LA is dire and solutions are complex and frustrating. A donation to this family isn't going to solve that problem, but l'm going to do it anyway. You can too if you're pulled in that direction. Either way I know you'll be rooting for Bessie and her boys. Last night when I was getting ready for bed I imagined the Berger family somewhere in the gleaming metropolis putting on their pajamas and tucking each other in for the night. This is one story that's on its way to a happy ending.
Checkit. No wild sketches or someone's stash of graffiti posters inside the super-sized portfolio. Drat. I did find: a few sheets each of watercolor paper, decorative paper, and heart-embossed paper. All will be upcycled in the classroom with the craft monkeys! The heart paper will go over BIG. The portfolio is perfect for storing charts and paper. Score 1 for team Moss! I have no doubt that a big cardboard box of sketchbooks is on the next street corner awaiting my arrival. Better take the red wagon with me on my next walk. I'm feeling lucky.
LOOK! My very own apron kit arrived in the mail today. I'm making some classroom aprons for some of the Craft Monkeys. Eating bananas all day is dirty business. I think I can make 2 kid-sized aprons from this 1 grown-up pattern & fabric. Then of course I can use the pattern to make more aprons from my fabric stash for more C.M. See how smart I am? Always thinking ahead.
I was reading the LA TIMES online edition a couple of days ago and came across THIS story. Go get a box of kleenex then go listen to the story of Bessie Mae and her two dear sons. It's a gut-wrenching audio slide show.
Then come back here tomorrow. I wrote to the reporter who covered this story to get an address to donate some cash to this family. I'll share the email he sent me which includes their address. You will seriously want to know the ending. And it's going to make you happy. It warmed the cockles of my heart.
I could just tell you now. But that would be no fun. And you know I'm all about fun.
Without the usual Santa Ana winds that accompany these infernos, the plume of smoke from the fires rises 20,000 feet into the air. A giant mushroom cloud probably visible from space. I took this from my front porch a few hours ago. Last night I drove along the base of the foothill freeway for about 15 miles watching the fires burn. You don't expect them to be mesmerizing, but they are. Terrible and beautiful at the same time.
Imagine mile-long strings of giant orange Christmas lights draped over the dark mountains and you'll get the picture. Red light glowing from behind the ranges not yet burning, and right next to the fire lines, thousands of paler lights from the homes that rest in the canyons and passes of the foothills. The prediction is that firefighters won't even get this thing contained until September 8th. Walls of flame 100 feet high. Less than 10% humidity. Brush that hasn't burned in 40 years. That's a BIG fire. An epic fire.
Smoke on the water. Fire in the sky. It's not me belting out Deep Purple, it's LA yesterday morning on my drive across the Broadway Bridge to school. Fire season has come to call in Southern California. The local mountains have been in flames all week. The entire city smells like a giant campfire. Mere blocks from my house this evening I could see walls of flame in the not too distant mountains. I'm perfectly safe, but THESE fires are close!
That means inclement weather schedule at the little classroom in the city all week. Which in turn means no more than a 25 minute break from my new flock all day. Remember them? Those new snow-white lambs with glossy smiles and innocent bleeting faces? All at once on Friday, as if on cue, they reached into their desks and took out their flint to sharpen their fangs. 25 little wolves in sheep's clothing! While I was in the classroom educating my new batch of punks, 4 big boxes of fabric were delivered to my front porch. A gift for the classroom from a kind reader of this blog. Imagine 80 pounds of gorgeous fabric to sort through! I set aside this pile thinking to make some aprons for my she-wolves. This pile was appropriated for use in future journal projects of my own. Aforementioned kind reader did note I could use some of the fabric for personal use. How grand! Wrapped pencil cans, puffy fabric frames, perhaps new sets of "sheep's clothing". Smoky or not, the sky's the limit!
The rest of the story. And I'm digging these T-shirt images & posters from online and photos from the San Francisco Chronicle.
I'm mostly silent about my political views over here, but every once in a while I get a bee in my bonnet about something. Today's that day. I was so moved watching all of the protesters on the news.
Shepard Fairy's contribution to the movement to repeal prop 8. What's not to love about a good message wrapped up in a tidy burst of rays?
Winter wonderland has arrived in Southern California! Our warm, usually sunshiny basin is rimmed in white. Frosty mountains ring the city with their icy tops. And an hour north in Antelope Valley snow has come to call.
I snagged these photos from the LA Times.
Several major arteries in and out of the city were closed yesterday. Commuters were stranded. The teacher next door rode the train to town. This is what it looks like in his neck of the woods.
Treacherous driving, but plenty of fun for kids. Especially the ones who've never seen this much white.
The weekend is almost here. There are snowmen to build. I'm delighted for all the big and little kids that will finally get their chance. Think of all the snowy memories being deposited into their mental scrapbooks for safekeeping.
Maybe you'll want to make a deposit of your own tonight - a poetry deposit to ease you into wintery dreams. Here, let me help with that...
Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening
Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow. My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year. He gives his harness bells a shake To ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound's the sweep Of easy wind and downy flake. The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.
A sad sad weekend in Los Angeles and Ventura where a head-on crash on Friday between a commuter train and a freight train killed 26 people and injured over 100 more. Many of the passengers were on their way home to Ventura.
Watching the interviews with family members and fellow train riders is so heart wrenching. This accident is the worst train wreck in modern California history.
All of these photos came from online newspapers
I heard this afternoon on the news, of one couple who were returning from his mother's funeral when the crash occured. She survived, but he was thrown into the stairwell and sustained massive head injuries and died on the scene.
And there is story after story just like that one.
Then there are all the offerings left on the tracks. It seemed right to leave something here on the blog.
Wildfires are roaring across northern and central California. In Big Sur several baby condor chicks that can't yet fly are feared dead. Big animals have been seen crossing the roads heading towards the ocean. Watching those majestic redwoods burning on the news is painful. So is imagining the suffering of the wild animals, the 17,000 or so firefighters valiantly trying to stop the inferno, and all of the people displaced from their homes. I made the mosaic from mostly AP photos of online news stories. Look at the photo in the middle of the rescued goat. And the one on the bottom right of the man displaced from his home. He's waiting by the side of the road with his most treasured possession in the front seat.
California is burning. Stop soon please, very very soon.
The sunsets and moonsets have been otherworldly with these infernos all around. Smoke in the air. A light layer of fine ash covering the car in the morning. Golden light throughout the day. It goes without saying that I'm enjoying my sister's visit, we don our newly stenciled t-shirts and gas masks each day and head out into my still beautiful, smoke-clouded city.
All mosaic photos garnered from internet news feeds.
The light in our early afternoon sky is amber from all the smoke particles in the air. It has been this way since morning. Ordinarily this end of the day light is the most lovely. Except that it's not the end of the day and people's homes are burning. Over a thousand burned to the ground so far between all the firestorms in Southern California. Then there are the animals, wild and domestic, who must be in a panic trying to flee. Especially all the horses. I know horses do not like fire. I found this sad photo online. It was taken near San Diego. Fire is part of life here in California at this time of year. Some years are so much worse than others. Still one never expects THEIR home to burn. Thankfully I am tucked away up here in my corner of LA away from the hurricane force winds and scorching flames.
In more cheerful news my sister arrives in about an hour! The house is cleaned, the cats' faces are scrubbed, paws are clean, and they are all lined up looking their spiffy best to greet Aunty Carol. She is the quintissential cat lover. Each member of the cat posse will be lavished with positive affirmations and massages for the next week. Fights will erupt over who gets to sleep on her bed tonight. I'll try to keep everyone calm.
I have been instructed that our first stop will be to a market to buy martini mixings. In this balmy weather we will be doing lots of porch sitting and sipping in the evenings. (Judy are you sure you don't want to drop everything and join us?) Here's Carol immediatly after her last airport pickup. Note the eager look on her face. She is a Master Martini Mixer. That's no joke.
To ensure maximum atmospheric pleasure I picked up these ridiculously small juice glasses at Anthropologie when I got my new drawer knobs. Frankly I can't imagine a life size human drinking from them, but they do make gorgeous votives for the porch table.
I also slipped these into my basket. I mean if you're going to do dishes you may as well have dish towels this fabulous to dry don't you think?
I've been getting dishes dirty on purpose just to have something to wash.
