Personifications in art. Each in the range of 2,000 years old, including a portrait of the deceased, painted on a mummy. Spotted at the Getty Villa, Malibu.

Rodin sculpture, at the Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena. Embellished with #Distressed and #Snapseed apps

The sheer joy of childhood …. embellished with the #Snapseed and #Distressed apps

Suburban Life #2 #suburbs #suburban life #dinosaur

Suburban Life #2  #suburbs #suburban life #dinosaur

#yosemite
What can I say? I love my kids….

#yosemite

What can I say? I love my kids….

Tags: yosemite

ON QUITTING FACEBOOK
Tonight, putting my son to bed, I revived an old tradition of singing with the guitar at the bedside, one by Woody Guthrie and another by Dylan. Sure enough he relaxed into the rhythm of my rudimentary guitar chords and was...

ON QUITTING FACEBOOK

Tonight, putting my son to bed, I revived an old tradition of singing with the guitar at the bedside, one by Woody Guthrie and another by Dylan. Sure enough he relaxed into the rhythm of my rudimentary guitar chords and was sleeping peacefully minutes after the last note of Only a Hobo (his request) …. Naturally, conditioned to do so by the social media-dominated culture we live in, I found myself wanting to share this private moment with everyone of my “friends” on Facebook. But I recalled quickly that this is just one of the reasons I decided to pull the plug on my Facebook site this afternoon. Sure, I would get several “likes” and a few supportive comments, and the public documentation of my kids’ and my own life would continue unbroken. That in itself is not a bad thing, but at some point I just felt that enough is enough– need to cast aside for now the endless overt and covert marketing strategies, the trivial postings of who ate what when (and who sang their kids to sleep), the humble brags about accomplishments and achievements couched in false or ironic modesty, the endless notices about every good cause or fascinating political essay posted by people who may or may not have read them themselves (guilty there too). So long, it’s been good to know you…. besides I am not social media deprived, as this blog attests, as do my newly revived Instagram and various other outlets and public storage units. 

Suburban Life

Suburban Life

THE “VULTURES” ARE PEOPLE TOO
Penny, a homeless woman that Leah (one of my students) had encountered during our documentary project this past semester, is still hanging out at the same Starbucks, next to the Korean market on the corner of Devonshire...

THE “VULTURES” ARE PEOPLE TOO

Penny, a homeless woman that Leah (one of my students) had encountered during our documentary project this past semester, is still hanging out at the same Starbucks, next to the Korean market on the corner of Devonshire and Reseda. When I stopped in recently, she recognized me, or pretended to, and we got into a long and surprisingly easy conversation. Probably in her thirties, she looks older, weathered and tanned in summer wear—faded jean shorts, red tank top with the word Independent across the chest. Manly hands, thick arms and legs. She’s got the smile of a seven-year-old blonde girl posing for her school portrait, and it’s genuine but heart-wrenchingly sad. Very sentimental, she is quick to tear up at the slightest sign of compassion or real human concern toward her. 

She gave me the lowdown on some of the other transient folks that frequent this spot, including the man we used to always find her with, Randy, who seems to have moved on to a peripheral location. When I showed her the photographs of James Montag, another regular here that Lena had interviewed briefly, she said, “Hey, that guy!” I told her that he had just left a few minutes earlier, but she didn’t seem too interested.

After awhile she went back outside, and while I wrote this I could see her sitting not four feet away, outside the plate glass window, talking with a guy she described as a real “road man,” in terms one might have been used to associate with hobos, but who really knows—he’s been all over the country though, and is according to Penny a very mellow cat. 

Penny tells me she lives with her sister in a nearby neighborhood; they put up with her as long as she’s not drinking. At one point we were both smiling, even sharing a laugh when she told me about a documentary project she had been part of in Texas some years ago, she and her fellow homeless soaking wet in skimpy plastic raincoats a lunchroom they were at gave them to wear against a storm. “Yeah, by that time I was so wet I said why not, go ahead,” she recalled, and they filmed her. I said something to the effect that there are a lot of documentaries but not enough solutions, and her eyes watered one more time. We chatted some more, and then she was outside again, behind the plate glass.

At dusk, Penny and the road man left together, and the other transients who spend a lot of time at this particular location also drifted off. As I was leaving, I overheard a man say to his friends, with the smugness one normally associates with a total asshole: “Well the vultures have all gone. You have to get here early (to get a table outside), they’re all over the place.”