Sears abides

Posted by on Jan 8, 2009 in Personal, Santa Monica | 3 Comments

I must give a quick shout-out to the Sears on Colorado and 4th in Santa Monica. I’d given up hope of any practical and not outrageously expensive store remaining in Santa Monica, but my quick trip there today gave me renewed hope. The last time I went in there was a couple of years ago, ...

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Condoville

Posted by on Jan 6, 2009 in Personal, Santa Monica | No Comments

The volume of construction and demolition in the City of Santa Monica has been astounding for the last several years.  In letters to the editor in local newspapers like the Santa Monica Mirror and the Santa Monica Daily Press, casual chitchat with strangers, and other scuttlebutt, there’s sometimes been discontent when one hears from developers ...

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Franken the Vote

Posted by on Jan 6, 2009 in Media, Politics | 2 Comments

Who knew after the decisive Presidential election that we’d have all of this drama about the US Senate in January?  As of now, Caroline Kennedy is making a strong, PR-powered push to replace Hillary Clinton as a senator from New York.  Kennedy first entered the collective consciousness of this election cycle when she joined her ...

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2009

Posted by on Dec 31, 2008 in Economy, Personal, Politics | One Comment

I think it would be impossible to say that I think 2009 is going to be a great year.  The economy in the United States and abroad is tanking.  Banks and investment houses have failed.  The real estate market is sinking, and no one I know is buying.  Acquaintances who I’d never think would economize ...

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The wifing up of Michelle Obama

Posted by on Dec 8, 2008 in Media, Politics | One Comment

Michelle Obama shows a lot of promise as our next First Lady.  I’ll admit that I was turned off by her at first.  She slammed Hillary Clinton in an early magazine interview, saying that if a woman couldn’t control what went on in her own house (meaning letting Bill off-leash), she doubted that she could ...

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Veterans Days 2008 and beyond

Posted by on Nov 11, 2008 in Los Angeles, Personal, Politics | No Comments

This week our family is observing Veterans day twice – both Monday and Tuesday.  We do have a veteran of World War II in our family, but that wasn’t our reason for taking off forty percent of our work week for the holiday.  My son’s preschool is off on Tuesday, and my daughter’s elementary school ...

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Politics is the new black

Posted by on Nov 8, 2008 in Los Angeles, Media, Politics | No Comments

It can’t be just my imagination or the circles I travel in.  I think that the 2008 election has actually made politics cool again.  Maybe politics was never cool, or only in the 1960s.  The presidential candidates were more than just “historic” – they made the election worth watching.  We followed their stories and felt ...

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Poll working

Posted by on Nov 5, 2008 in Personal, Politics | No Comments

In an earlier post (Mama Needs Obama – October 17, 2008) I noted that my mother is an aging woman with no health insurance, a lifelong Republican who has always voted a straight Republican ticket and always will.  I wrote about her newest health issue, sciatica, which joins diabetes and a cluster of other related ...

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Library card

Posted by on Nov 1, 2008 in Los Angeles, Personal | No Comments

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 ...

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I am not my bumper sticker

Posted by on Oct 28, 2008 in Los Angeles, Personal, Politics | No Comments

My car displays two bumper stickers, one plain blue one showing my support for the Obama-Biden ticket and the other the iconic “Hope” image of Obama’s face in red, white, and blue.  I had hoped to find one that said “Progress” because I’ve always found “hope” to be either hokey or just too heart-on-the-sleeve to ...

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