GOVERNOR OF CALIFORNIA NEWSOM GIVES SPEECH ON THE TROOPS SENT BY TRUMP TO LOS ANGELES

CALIFORNIA : JONI MITCHELL

EVE BABITZ : SLOW DAYS, FAST COMPANY - THE WORLD, THE FLESH, and L.A. : RAIN

The silver lining was rain.  A sudden, mistaken rain that came all at once in the middle of the following Thursday, vanishing after five minutes upon noticing its blunder. No clouds, seventy-five degrees, no reason, but it rained.  It rained on the hot oily asphalt and made it smell rainy.  It rained the fray from the landscape, just like that, with a snap of its wrong turn.

The wild blue yonder came upon us like a drunken zoom lens thundering into focus.  It seemed that God had made up His mind to change the background without telling anyone.

Los Angeles got huge shafts of pure yellow sunlight surging through office windows.  Daffodils came to mind. Violets.  

You could choose any direction and see as far as you wanted.  Past Catalina and on west all the way to the East. In a quick clap of mistaken thunder the look of Southern California had been transformed miraculously and I have seen nothing like it anywhere else or heard of any such thing.

You could pick up mad gladness from bus drivers and studio chiefs and pool cleaners and check-out girls and guys doing their news on the radio.  "Rain!" they cried, and immediately meteorologists were contacted to predict more rain. Rain from Mexico, rain from the San Joaquin Valley, rain from a storm out in the Pacific, rain coming down from Oregon.  Converging rain -- we're bound to have more rain.

"Did you see it, it rained! everyone said to each other, in soft panting voices as though they were in love.

Excerpt pages 92 and 93 published in 1977

JUST HOW HOT and DRY IS IT?

So, today was 'be good to my dog' day. 

She is now closer to 15 years old than 10 and she is showing her age.  I have a wonderful wheeled carrier for her and when we go more than a block, I take it with me.  When she appears tired - or the sidewalk is too hot for any dog's paws - I pop her in and wheel her.  She likes to ride with her little head sticking out.  It's a bumpy ride on the sidewalks and streets and sometimes my elbows throb later from all that vibration, so I suppose she must feel that in her bones too.  Yet, when I move the carrier towards the door, she sees that and she readies herself to go. More fun than sleeping the day away, I suppose.  And she does love to shop - especially the dog food and treat stores.

I pack a bottle of water and a small water bowl.  I pack some treats. A thin blanket and a small fat cushion for the bottom of the carrier.  Sometimes food. Or a sweater for her.

We left a store and went to sit on a metal bench that was in the shade but on cement before we headed to the cool shade of the grassy park. I took her out of the carrier and pulled out the water bowl. I filled it with some water from the bottle.

Then, before she could even take a sip, came a bug - running right towards the bowl! The bug must have been desperate for water.  It must have smelled water.  Heard the pour. Perhaps it was ready to die of thirst. It was some sort of beetle, about the size of a big watermelon seed and striated brown.

I quickly moved the carrier, the dog, and the water bowl out of the way.  But I poured some water onto the cement.

The bug stopped right at the edge of this pool of water.  And it stayed there at the edge and it drank.

C 2022 Christine Trzyna

100 YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF WOMEN's SUFFRAGE RIGHT TO VOTE

I have not always voted.  I started out voting every year.  Then in California, I got confused.  I also, though thinking of myself as informed by reading around issues, including Pro and Con arguments provided to California voters, have voted for some things that I regret.  Such as, I regret voting for three strikes = life in prison.  I sat it out for some time because I also felt that straight ticket, thoughtless party politics voting was beneath me.  And because I felt that there was no one I was especially thrilled with.

I've come full circle to believing that voting needs to be exercised.  I don't want to be part of the problem of people being elected and new rules going into effect simply because so few people voted.

Sometimes you have to give it your gut instinct or your best guess.

JOAN DIDION QUOTE

"I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see, and what it means.  What I want and what I fear." - Joan Didion


original source: her book "Why I Write," 1976
secondary source: book Legendary Authors and the Clothes They Wore by Terry Newman

THERE WILL BE STRUGGLE THERE WILL BE ART - PACIFIC STANDARD TIME

PACIFIC STANDARD TIME FREE ART EXHIBITIONS September 2017 - January 2018