I started this website in 2011, while sitting in a sterile hospital room next to my dad, who was fighting to live but actually dying in bits. Of course, I did not know that at the time. But time was what I had a lot of back then, so many long hours spent waiting with…
Category: Memoirs or Special Interest
Woody Guthrie Once Sang About the Deadly New Year’s Day Flood of 1934
I recently came across this recording by American folk singer Woody Guthrie telling the tale of the Flood of 1934. In it, he talks about the local towns besieged, the lives lost, and some of what happened during the disaster. His unique voice and singing is/was a touching memorial to a devastating historical event that…
That Time When 6000 People Lived in Griffith Park
Not many locals know that L.A.’s treasured Griffith Park was once the site of a major public housing project. Well, let’s dial back the clock to post-WWII. Military vets are returning home and a baby boom is just about to begin! From 1946 to 1954, a bustling pop-up village, complete with Quonset-hut homes and gardens…
Trompe L’ Oeil and the Palo Alto Street Art of Greg Brown
It was such fun living in Palo Alto in the 1970’s—in the “pre-Silicon Valley-era” before real estate prices and greedy ambition rarified the place forever. Downtown Palo Alto was just a cool place—small and totally walkable . . . a mix of funky shops, book stores, coffee and tea shops, fancy clothing and jewelry boutiques mixed…
Guest Post: Growing up in the Foothills, Sunland’s Lancaster Lake (part 4 of 4)
AND SO IT GOES . . . BOYS, BEER AND THE LAKE’S DEMISE As the years passed and we became older, we were no longer attracted to the joys of Lancaster Lake for the same reasons we were when we were younger. Such things as bailing out the rental boats for a free boat ride…