Category Archives: Uncategorized

What Color is a Canyon?

1 Reply

WATCH THE BIRDIE DEPT.

  • On the whole he’d rather be in Philadelphia, but Old Ben don’t need bifocals to enjoy his View.

It was an uncharacteristically dark day when I last visited Placerita, breathtaking though the scenery proved. So yesterday, with sunshine and blue skies — also the return of lockdown/shutdown –I hauled my View over the San Gabriels for Placerita gold while it’s there for the panning. My first find was the remarkable hoodoo, at the top of a steep anticline. I googled “old man in a chair, rock formation” in 100 ways, but couldn’t find any mention online that anybody in the Park had ever even noticed this formation before. So to me he’s “Old Ben.” Not a bad View, eh?

I found many amazing shots, but surprisingly, the sparkling clarity of the air made the brights SO bright; and the steep canyon elevations made the shady spots SO dark; that I was pushed to the edge of my photographic ability (or at least my iPhone camera’s ability) to get a satisfying image.

It’s a challenge to portray say, cottonwoods shimmering in the sun, without obscuring the scene with glare or dark spots. So I started playing around with the color-filter settings on the camera.

I usually shun these artificial enhancers for a natural View; but here I found the range of tones and finishes helped to interpret the scenes. Together, they portray a small bit of the richness of fall in Southern California. None of them is the true image, in other words, except all of them.

This is how the spot looked to me last week, in gloom. What color is a canyon?

For the trip home, I took the “back way,” Sand Canyon Road. The freeway route over Newhall Pass takes twenty minutes to Valley Village. But this way, you cut right through the mountains to connect with Little Tujunga Cyn Road, and it only takes forty minutes. Rather than just another freeway trip, this route is a ride you’ll remember all your life. In living color!

The Mouth of Santa Monica — Will Rogers State Beach

2 Replies
The foundation at the top of the Palisade is all that remains of Charles Laughton’s house, most of which slid down onto PCH. It’s a rare spot on the coast where we aren’t being overlorded by some gleaming palace of the Conspicuously Consuming.

The View took in the morning: hot; a slack calendar; and light traffic. The beach! First swim of the summer. I took Topanga Canyon, which was so empty I got to coast down the winding road, breathing in the sagebrush, all the way from Mulholland to the PCH.

I got in a fine swim in emerald green surf. Trudging back across the sand I was struck by how beautiful the Boca of Santa Monica looked this morning. This is a little creek that drains the Palisades, but the water never quite makes it to the sea; it disappears into the sands just a few yards from the surf. Egrets, curlews, and other wading fowl were loving life. The bridge carries the PCH, where the famous Patrick’s Roadhouse offers a power-breakfast spot for Tom Cruise and Schwarzenegger and all the other A-listers. And the heavenly entrada of Santa Monica Canyon, behind.


Gov. Alvarado gave this land to two couples in joint ownership: the LA blacksmith Ysidro Reyes and his wife Maria Villa; and the LA vintner Francisco Marquez and his wife, Roque Valenzuela. Both families were hijos de pais, born in L.A., the children and grandchildren of Spanish army officers. The name of the creek gave the title of the ranch — but it was a bit of a patriarchal joke. Saint Monica is the patroness of wives who hold their tongues, and don’t gush forth:

“Example of a Wife: The Church celebrates the relationship of the saintly mother and son, but what is often not stressed is that she was a saintly wife. She married a hot-tempered pagan, Patricius, and through her patience, perseverance, charity, and prayers, her husband did convert to Christianity on his deathbed. Set a guard, LORD, before my mouth, keep watch over the door of my lips (Psalm 141:3) Monica provided such a loving example of simply not reacting or criticizing her husband when he would lose his temper or verbally abuse her. Patience and gentleness moved him more than responding and criticizing.”

— Encyclopedia of Cotholic Culture

I’m literally the only person in Los Angeles who still gets the joke, so I share it for purposes of local folklore. The full fascinating story of how Santa Monica got to be called Santa Monica, can be seen here:

https://valleyvillage.home.blog/2020/03/27/long-view-of-kuruvungna-springs-or-the-tears-of-saint-monica/

So It’s Trump Who Gets To Re-Make Earth’s Future

Leave a reply

Mr. Sanders has ended his Quixotic attempt to rejuvenate democracy. It was a good try, against the wicked DNC and the Satanic corporate media airheads, and Americans’ auto-pilot click-it-forget-it distraction, and even worse, the country’s shit-ignorance about how society, a modern economy, the human body, and the natural world itself, actually function. Sen. Sanders was the only voice in the whole of our world today, who proclaimed the goodness of creating a meaningful, sustainable, people-based economy and an inclusive, color-blind and class-blind government. He was jeered and heckled.

There isn’t anybody now in American public life who will stop the future of crony capitalists hiding behind zombie-headed corporations chasing fantasy wealth into the dust. There isn’t anybody who even WANTS to stop it.

The Democrats, “led” by the hologram of Joe Biden, have got NOTHING, NOTHING, to deal with coronavirus or the stalled economy or the exploded dollar or the debt or the unemployment or the collapse of medical care and human society itself, which we are facing. They’re not embarrassed to let the Republicans lead on everything, they’re proud of it — they have proven themselves Trumps eager sinister hand.

I doubt the party will survive the election, if there even is an election. I doubt whether much of anything we remember of good old America will survive. Mr. Sanders was fighting for the best of it, and nobody wanted it.