Commute, 12

I am soothed when traffic slows at this spot on Beverly Blvd. in Los Angeles. I see this on the way to work. On the way back, I rarely notice it. You'd think I wouldn't miss it either way. Maybe it's all about what the sun is doing, or, more likely, what the traffic is doing.

I left the little corner of my car window in the photo because I like it.

I should mention that I take photos from the car only when traffic is stopped. I mean stopped.

Say, I wonder why there's no graffiti on the plain part of the wall? Someone must be taking care of the place.

The Dena is My Village

Yesterday morning I went to South Pasadena to meet with writer, blogger and successful entrepreneur Margaret Finnegan. Her luscious new book, The Goddess Lounge, is selling very well. I had a long list of questions to ask her about publishing as I move forward with my plans for Camelot & Vine.

Pictured is the old Meridian Iron Works building, which houses the South Pasadena Historical Museum. It's right by the Mission Metro Rail Station. South Pas is the closest thing to Mayberry around here. You can ride your bike to the station and take the train to downtown Los Angeles; it takes about 15 minutes. The big white square is for movies on the lawn.

Some may argue that Altadena is our closest thing to Mayberry, but Altadena is more like the Dena's version of Berkeley. In about 1976. Or Idlewild in the off-season.

South Pasadena is Margaret's turf. It's also Laurie's turf. Thank you, Laurie, for allowing me the border-crossing. Laurie would say it's my turf, too. We are sooo not territorial around here.

Margaret and I sat upstairs at Buster's (cash only), just across the street from the Iron Works. The heat has finally arrived on the west coast so we drank iced drinks. I had too much caffeine. Margaret generously answered every question on my typed list, and waited patiently while I jotted notes. (We are sooo not territorial around here.)

My biggest question was, now that I've done all this research, what's my next step?

There are about five first steps.

Hello ground, I have hit you running. Thank you, Margaret.

And thank you, Buster's, for the caffeine.

The Pasadena Olympic Team

It was a lot of fun watching the JPL team Sunday night as they anticipated the landing of the Mars rover Curiosity. They maintained outward calm as Curiosity approached the planet's surface, but one could watch their cheekbones get tighter and breaths grow more shallow as the anticipation built.

When the cheering broke out I took pictures of the computer screen, but those didn't turn out so well. So I thought I'd show you a picture of where it all happened. No, this is not Mars, this is NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab, scooched up between the feet of the foothills at the north end of Hahamongna Watershed Park, where it takes up space in La Canada Flintridge with a Pasadena address. Go figure.

It's amazing what these scientists have done. They've landed a craft on Mars, with precision, and they've done it basically with tin cans, rubber-bands and string. Imagine what they could do with an actual budget--a budget, say, half the size of the Pentagon's. Or even a quarter of that. We'd have had resort hotels and spaceports on Pluto by now and Pluto is only a plutoid.

The people who landed the rover Sunday night are not the only folks who work at JPL. The geniuses and support staff working there, some of whom I'm privileged to call friends and neighbors, study everything from the earth's oceans and atmosphere to the planets in our solar system to background radiation in deep space. Every time we walk at Hahamongna I think of them. What a privilege. What a team.

Zen Monday: #208

Happy Zen Monday!

I'm tempted to tell you my response to this photo. But I'll leave it to you, because Zen Monday is the day you write the copy.

Outgrown

Looks like somebody got too big for this small, sweet house in Northwest Pasadena.

I haven't outgrown anything lately, although I may have to give up a favorite pair of shorts if I'm not careful. You get to a point, eventually, where you stabilize. If you are careful, that is.

It is to be hoped we are referring only to our physical size here, not the size of our willingness--to listen, for example, or to learn, or to just be open to what's next.

Another Huntington Surprise

We're in the Associated Foundations Teaching Greenhouse at the Huntington Library and Gardens. (Apparently we slept here.) This, uh, item is on the top of the shelf pictured in yesterday's photo.

Any guesses?

You probably know what it is but I haven't a clue.

The Huntington's Surprises

With colors like these, it's tempting to use the "saturate" function in my editing program. But I left them alone. They're fine on their own.

These planting pots are shelved in the Associated Foundations Teaching Greenhouse at the Huntington Library and Gardens in San Marino, which graces Pasadena's southern border. The Greenhouse is one of the Huntington's many surprises. For the longest time I didn't even know it was there, but it's right next to the Children's Garden. I couldn't find a specific page about the Teaching Greenhouse on the Huntington's website, but you can glean information about it here.

There's an interesting/weird thing in the upper left corner of this photo. I'll show you a picture of it tomorrow and we'll try to figure out what it is.

Camelot & Vine: Casey's adventure (and mine)

Official Announcement:

I have a publisher for my novel, Camelot & Vine.

That publisher is me.

I have weighed the goods and bads, the ups and downs, the fats and thins and now is the time! No more dilly-dallying and thinking and wondering and ohIdon'tknowing. I have watched my friends make successes of their self-published works. I see four self-published authors on the New York Times Bestseller list this week. Just yesterday another self-published novel was purchased to become a Hollywood film. Self-publishing is in! It's hot! It's the latest thing! And you know me, I am all about the latest trends. You should see my wardrobe. 

No. You shouldn't. There are advantages to the internet.

What I mean is there's no better time than now, no better publisher than me, for Camelot & Vine. And I'm excited.

Ten years ago, self-publishing was creepy. The only people who did it were desperate types who couldn't get the publishing industry to give them the time of day. But now we have the internet, with different platforms and pricing. It's the wild west out here, and speaking of my wardrobe, I look fine in cowboy boots.

I'm excited to be part of this new wave of publishing. I took a baby step (in my boots) by publishing Belinda's Birthday as a free download on Smashwords. (If I said I got my feet wet would that be too confusing, with the boots image?) Now I'm ready to move forward with the whole shebang. 

Actually it's not a shebang. It's a novel.

I've added a new page to my blog. You can see the link at the top here. It's called Camelot & Vine: Casey's adventure (and mine). I'll update the page whenever I have news of my publishing adventure. Of course I'll remind you here when I post there.

I don't mind telling you it's scary and I'll be grateful for any encouragement you feel inclined to give, whether it comes in the form of cheerleading, questioning or critique. But I'm right about this. My main character, Casey, goes on her adventure by accident. I embark on mine with a sense of purpose, the t-shirt in the window of the photo notwithstanding.

Theme Day: Numbers

Today's City Daily Photo theme day is "numbers." I knew I'd eventually have a reason to post this shot. This old license plate was part of the eclectic decor at Perdue's barbecue restaurant, a great little place that had an all-too-short tenure on Orange Grove Blvd. near Los Robles. I guess their timing wasn't great, but the food sure was.

City Daily Photo is still having website problems but we still have the nice linky page, thanks to Julie of Sydney Eye. Speaking of eyes, I like telling you about new blogs and lately I've been enjoying Cambridge, UK. Rath Savinders has quite an eye.

Guest Author: Dylan Brody

John and I met Dylan Brody in our Van Nuys days when our dogs introduced us at the dog park. You may be familiar with Dylan: he's a recurring guest on John Rabe's Off Ramp on KPCC, and he regularly performs live in the Los Angeles area and around the country (check his website for his schedule). Dylan's Modern Depression Guidebook is available on Amazon. His promo video for the Guidebook made me laugh out loud. Please welcome today's guest author, Dylan Brody.

At some point as you put together your novel you’ll get stuck. It happens to everyone. When it happens imagine yourself inside the scene or directly involved in the action and pay attention to things that didn’t seem important until you put your focus on them.

Are there sounds you or your characters hear that you hadn’t noticed before? A smell in the air? What are the small things the characters do with their hands?

As you begin to flesh out these tiny details, you will find they serve you in larger ways. If Deloris twists a strand of hair around her finger as she thinks, the same gesture may be used later to let us in on the fact that she’s thinking without telling us. If Givenchy Gentlemen hangs in the air when Paul arrives on the scene, dark-haired and arrogant, we may know that a deception is in place when the scent of Givenchy Gentlemen accompanies a dark-haired, arrogant man who introduces himself as Frederick.

The more you allow yourself to sink into the reality you create, to take in the details and report on them, the more life the story takes on for you and the more its own natural path reveals itself.

Many writing teachers give the instruction to show, rather than tell. This cannot be accomplished, though, until you begin to see, rather than invent.  The farther you sink into the imagined reality of the world you seek to reveal, the more you will be able to relate your experience there through the senses rather than through exposition. It is one thing to say that a scene takes place in a doll shop. It is quite another to place dolls, porcelain and bright-eyed, in careful rows on shelves from which they can look down on arriving customers, each hoping in her inanimate heart to be taken from the musty, humid orphanage for abandoned childhood companions to a bright new home with a nursery and a Labrador. It is one thing to say that a place is dark and dusty. It is another thing entirely to watch the slow descent of motes through the single, pencil-thin shaft of sunlight that slants downward through a bullet-hole in one of the five foil-blacked windows.

Being stuck need not be an indication of writer’s block. It is merely a reminder to sink deeper, take in the details. What do you see, hear, smell, feel? See. Hear. Smell. Feel. Write.

Zen Monday: #207

Welcome to Zen Monday, when the PDP community is eager to hear your deep thoughts, your essential feelings. Tell us what the picture says to you.

Skin Deep

I've never been to the Skin Deep Laser Medspa on Fair Oaks. Have you? "Skin deep laser med" doesn't sound like my style, but "spa" sounds absolutely like the thing I ought to do on a Sunday.

I remember, almost twenty years ago, taking a trip with my friend Gretchen through the central California wine country. It wasn't as fancy there as it is now, with its vineyards and tasting rooms. But we had fun, we explored, and on the way home we stopped at an Ojai spa. The setting was rustic. We drove off the highway along a winding drive to a low building among the trees. The swimming pool was empty. It seemed like no one else was there, which is entirely possible. All they had was sun, relaxation and quiet. And a couple of masseurs.

Not so here in Pasadena, where you can get Microdermabrasion and Photodynamic Acne Therapy and and "virtually painless hair removal." I'm sure all these things are lovely, but I'm realistic. They will not make me look like the models on the website, or even like the young woman I was in Ojai twenty years ago. That's fine. She was pretty enough, but she had a few things to learn.

Baked Feet

I took this photo for no other reason but the light in the window from the late-day sun.

I got the shot yesterday--walked too far to get it, wearing the wrong shoes, and now my feet hurt. It's a good enough excuse to stay home today and write, something I often feel I don't have enough time to do. (And I always feel like I don't get enough writing done.) Boz will get a shorter walk this evening, which he won't mind. I think his feet hurt a little bit, too.

Our new neighbors move in today. Boz and I will take them some store-bought scones. (I trust our toes can make it across the street and back.) Don't scold me for not baking; nobody wants homemade baked goods from me, they taste like old sweaters, or dog feet, or the wrong shoes.

YWCA Week

I've seen some excellent postings about the Julia Morgan YWCA. Today I'd like to direct your attention to my favorite: Pasadena Adjacent's beautiful post and video. You will not be disappointed.

Thanks for joining me during Julia Morgan YWCA Week!

Urbex

I'm not trying to preach to you about the Julia Morgan YWCA (like I do about Hahamongna). I'm sure lessons can be learned from this building and its history, but I'm posting about it this week because I like the photos I took there.

I would be into urban exploration if I wasn't terrified of being caught and arrested, or even just embarrassed. UE is a sport for kids in athletic shoes and baggy pants--grown women aren't supposed to crawl around in abandoned buildings.

But I have some baggy pants. I wear athletic shoes (I have to, or else my feet hurt). And I love exploring the places society has left behind.

Not that this place will be abandoned forever. I'm glad Pasadena's reclaiming it. (Look what I found over at PasadenaDigitalHistory.com.)

It was fun taking pictures where the ghosts linger. I didn't have to sneak, I wasn't afraid of getting caught and I got to wear my grown-up pants.

Plans for the YWCA

I believe I promised more photos of the Julia Morgan YWCA.

I noodled around the web looking for information about Morgan and about the building itself. Morgan, the first female architect licensed in the state of California, created many iconic buildings (Hearst Castle is the most famous), including several YWCAs. One is in O'ahu. I found this quote on their website:

"When Morgan closed her office in 1951, at the age of 79, she had her files, blueprints and drawings destroyed because she thought they would be of interest only to her clients who already had their own copies of relevant material."

I thought that was kind of interesting.

Here's an index of Morgan's work;
A link to some photos of the exterior of the Y;
An article by Joe Piasecki in the Pasadena Star-News about how much the renovation might cost, who might do the renovating, and how the building may or may not be used.

I haven't decided what I want the building to become, have you? There's a YMCA across the street but seeing as developer money might be involved, I suppose a YWCA is too much to ask for. But it might be nice to have some chaise lounges along the hallway downstairs and a buffet in one of the large corner rooms. I would adore a garden in the courtyard, where perhaps one could get a foot rub. Most of all, though, I want an office upstairs, with a secretary provided in an office adjacent to mine. I think I'd like to be on the third floor with my window overlooking Holly Street, but don't hold me to that. Let's wait and see what I'll have to choose from.

Oh and room service! There should be room service. And, um...toga-clad waiters.

Those are my ideas. Let's hear yours.

Hello, Goodbye

John and I often joke that we live in Paradise. We love our street, our neighbors. When we were shopping here we didn't know the recession was coming. We had big plans for a someday mansion, and we thought this would be our interim home. Just in case the mansion didn't work out we picked a home we could love, but we figured we wouldn't stay here forever.

During our nearly seven years here we've become friends with the people who share the block with us. We've watched their families grow. Sure, we might hear of a development on Facebook. Then we get to walk across the street and check it out for real.

Change happens, though, it always will. Over our tenure we've watched one family morph from Single Man Purchases Home to Young Couple Remodels House to Family With Two Children and this week they're Beloved Family Moves Away. We hate to say goodbye to them, yet even this loss is laced with joy. Hello to a family from the next block who went from New People with Little Girls to Dear Friends We're Always Glad to See to YAY, They Bought the House. And get this: the deal was facilitated by (say it with me) a neighbor on the block, also a good friend, who happens to be a real estate agent.

There was an early birthday party. An ice cream social. A brunch. Much goodbye-ing and also hello-ing. At the brunch, while the children played on the Slip 'n Slide and the parents chatted and drank mimosas, I was captured by a nostalgia for the very moment I was in, missing it already: I sensed the children grown and gone, the young dads already middle-aged, the moms greying, my own self bent with years, my arm hooked in John's. And I thought, I am so glad we picked a home we could love, because this is our someday mansion, and I hope we will stay here forever.

Zen Monday: #206

I'm so afraid to say anything. I don't want to influence what you say.

It's Zen Monday. Tell us what you think.

*******************************************************

This is not about Zen Monday. Just information for those interested in Hahamongna. The deadline for public comment on the current EIR process is August 23rd. (I'd get mine in by the 22nd, if I were you.)

Please send your responses and comments regarding the scope of the EIR to:
Rosa Laveaga
City of Pasadena
Department of Public Works
Phone: (626) 744-4321
E-mail: mbmuproject@cityofpasadena.net,
Mailing Address:
City of Pasadena
Department of Public Works
Attn: Engineering Division
100 N. Garfield Avenue
Pasadena, CA, 91101


Tomorrow night is the bi-monthly meeting of the Hahamongna Watershed Park Advisory Committee. Here's the info:

The next meeting of the Hahamongna Watershed Park Advisory Committee (HWPAC) will be on Tuesday, July 24th at 6pm.

Meeting location is the
Pasadena City Yards
233 W. Mountain Street, 2nd floor Training Room
Pasadena, CA 91103

I.     Call to Order

II.    Roll Call

III.   Public Comment on Matters not on the Agenda and Items over which the Committee has Advisory Authority. (Please limit comments to three (3) minutes each)

IV.   APPROVAL OF MINUTES
-       Regular Meeting of March 27, 2012

V.    WORKSHOP: HWP Projects (Introduced by PW Staff)
A.    Procedure for presentation and public participation for Item V - ‘WORKSHOP: HWP Projects’ (Chair)
B.    Overview of HWP Master Plan (PW Staff)
C.    HWP Related Environmental Documents (PW Staff)
D.    Active Projects of the HWP Master Plan (PW Staff)

VI.   Old Business
E.    Update on LACDPW Post Station Fire Sediment Removal Project (Information item - PW Staff)
F.     Update on the Hahamongna Multi-Benefit Project and the Hahamongna Basin Multi-Use Project (Information item – PW Staff)

VII.  New Business
A.    General Announcements (From commissioners and/or staff)

VIII. Items from the Chair
A.    Next Meeting – September 25, 2012


Thank you!
Rosa Laveaga
Arroyo Seco Project Supervisor/HWPAC Liaison
Department of Public Works - Parks & Natural Resources Division
City of Pasadena
office: 626.744.3883
fax: 626.744.3932

And don’t forget to go to these City webpages to access all documents
and the most recent information about Hahamongna!

http://www.ci.pasadena.ca.us/PublicWorks/Arroyo_Seco/
http://www.ci.pasadena.ca.us/PublicWorks/arroyo_plans_and_projects/
http://www.hahamongna.com/mbmu
A report by Hugh Bowles that describes the grant requirements for Sycamore Grove Athletic Field at Hahamongna, and how it appears the City of Pasadena may have falsified information on its grant application: http://www.savehahamongna.org/documents/SycamoreFieldGrantAnalysis062512.pdf

Goddesses

I could have shown you Margaret Finnegan signing books for her fans. She signed a lot of books yesterday.

I could have shown you the people. SPACE Arts Center in South Pasadena was packed.

I could have shown you Margaret reading from her book. She read brilliantly, and now everyone is begging for the audiobook.

I could have shown you the crowd either noshing, laughing, or applauding.

But this is my favorite shot: two readers, absorbed in the blurbs on the back of The Goddess Lounge. They're about to buy a couple of copies and have them signed by the author.

Margaret Finnegan's novel, The Goddess Lounge, is on sale everywhere. If you're not sure you want to make an investment, you can read Margaret's blog for a while or check out her stories on Smashwords. Once you've done that, I think you'll be as proud to know her as I am.

A Pretty Penny

Yesterday morning: a walk with a friend in Bungalow Heaven, followed by iced latte and a pastry at Penny For Your Thoughts.

Do you know of another place where you can buy an antique chair for your porch, vintage dishes for your kitchen, unique hand-made frames for your walls and a one-of-a-kind dress for your very own self, then sit down (at a table with a tablecloth) and have a cup of excellent coffee accompanied by a home-made cookie from the tiny, local, Apron Strings bakery?

There's no other place like it. It's not just the great stuff, it's also Millie's artful displays. It's my favorite shop in Pasadena and I don't get there often enough.

Stop by. Ooh and aah. While you're there, I've decided I want that bottle with the starfish on it.