RIP Michael Jackson and Farah Fawcett
Michael Jackson and Farah Fawcett both died within 5 miles of each other yesterday – Thursday, June 25, 2009 – in West Los Angeles. The only other time that I can remember two such celebrities dying within such a short period of time was in late August, 1997, when both Mother Teresa (in India) and ...
No license plate, no problem
I’ve been spending a lot of hours on the streets of West Los Angeles lately and noticing that lots of cars are without license plates. One car at my children’s school has been sporting the dealer-issued ad-in-lieu of license plate for around a year. The other day, driving north on Sepulveda, a sporty black Volvo ...
The Hybrid
I have had my trusty VW Passat V6 wagon for several years. I’m still proud of it. It’s an exponentially better ride than most of the other cars I’ve driven. My mother’s ’73 Plymouth Valiant comes to mind. The last time I saw that car was on a “Push Pull and Drag” TV ad in ...
Proposition to end the madness in California
I didn’t get fired up about voting no on proposition 8 in California, and I regret it. I took for granted how well organized the religious right is and how well smear tactics have worked, and I assumed that Prop 8 would not pass. It did pass, and now our court systems will be bogged ...
Library card
Every day when I come to the intersection right before my daughter’s elementary school, I see it. This particular branch of the Los Angeles Public Library has been tempting me ever since I started going next door to the sandy, sunny park next door with my children. Today I had half an hour to spend ...
Leaving Los Angeles
This week we returned from our annual trip to see our families “back East” (as people in California call anything to the east of Phoenix). For the first time in 14 years in Los Angeles, I was not that thrilled about arriving in my adopted home. Maybe it’s the still out-of-control real estate, the nasty ...
