A Photo Blog of the San Fernando Valley. With comment.
Standing alone for the blue, Ventura and Sepulveda.
The Sherman Oaks BLM chapter has been busking in front of The Galleria for 113 consecutive afternoons. On Sundays, Benjamin stands on the opposite corner and witnesses for the police. Sometimes the BLMers cross the intersection and do a walk by. Compared to scenes from Portland the exchange, or lack thereof, was civilized. Score one for the Valley. He gets grief from passing drivers sometimes but doesn’t mind too much. He says he enjoys it.
“When they crowded around my table and started demanding that I raise my fist, it was their insistence that I participate in something that I did not understand that led me to withhold my hand.” -Lauren Victor, diner and reluctant fist-raiser.
Top photo: Sit-in at the lunch counter of the Cherrydale Drugstore, Arlington, Virginia, 1960.
Apart from the historical irony, I can’t help wondering which of these tableaus is worse. That I should be asking this question in 2020 says a lot about how far we have strayed from e Pluribus Unum and where we are inevitably headed.
If one can only be either fully woke or stand accused of being a white supremacist then our public space has become awfully small in a very short window of time. Most of us choose the path of least resistance, which precludes sitting alone on principle. The intimidators are banking on this.
Feral Cat 1, Sun 0. Basking in a survivors’ victory at 7 pm…
I have no idea how they do it with a fur coat on. Nature is a genius.
The ficus didn’t do so well yesterday. Watered it on Saturday. Less than 24 hours later, the top third of the hedge withered before my eyes as though God had sent down pestilence.
All things green shall by sundown be green no more, sayeth the Lord.
Inevitably, there was another homeless encampment brush fire in the Sepulveda Basin, the second of the past month. We have normalized this like summer weather.
Feral cats and meth heads are anti-fragile. Los Angeles may fall into perdition in the next six months and they will make a slight adjustment and continue as before. The rest of us, in our green and ordered life, anchored by our need for safety and sustainability, scan the horizon line and wonder what It Portends.