Picturing July: #photoadayjuly and #dailybookpic

This month, I jumped on the photo-meme bandwagon--not once, but twice. My husband has been participating in #photoaday on Instagram for a few months, and I thought I'd join him in July. (If you're on Instagram and want to follow, we're both using our Twitter handles there: I'm florinda3rs and he's RamsesTMagnum--the only only place where he's Tall Paul is around here!)

I'm sharing my #photoadayjuly pictures on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, but wanted to put a few of my favorites here too. (I'm captioning my pictures with the Phonto app, which is available for both iPhone and Android.)








Since I was already in a photo-hunting, picture-posting mode, I thought I might as well sign on for #DailyBookPic, which was launched this month by Cassandra at Book Riot, while I was at it. I'm not doing this one every day, but when I do, I'm putting my pictures on Twitter, The 3 R's Blog Facebook page, and the #DailyBookPic Pinterest board. Here's a small sample:







Are you participating in any photo memes this month? Tell us where, so we can follow you!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

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10 Years in L.A.: The Loathe List

I've lived in Southern California ten years as of this week, and that seems like an appropriate time for some reflection on a place I wouldn't have expected to find myself before this decade started. Sometimes I still wonder at the fact that I'm here at all, but I've rarely questioned my decision to come here.

There are so many ways in which my life here is better than I had any reason to expect a decade ago--and there are irritations and aggravations that weren't part of my life before I lived here. While Los Angeles and its environs have their virtues, they have some pretty big drawbacks too.

And so, on the occasion of our tenth anniversary together, here's the second half of my SoCal Top Ten, which effectvely constitutes the Bottom Five.

FIVE THINGS I LOATHE ABOUT SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

THE TRAFFIC. "Car culture" was born here, and it continues to rule. A driver's license is considered a right more than a privilege, and a car is a necessity in a metropolis that is seriously lacking in public transit. But the five- and six-lane freeways built decades ago are inadequate for the volume of cars that use them now, and a prudent person will always allow an extra 20-30 minutes for potential traffic snarls when going anywhere. Sadly, too many people aren't prudent, and that tends to make them cranky, careless, and rude. 

THE SPRAWL. The car culture goes hand-in-hand with the familiar archetypes of suburbia, and this is a city without a real core. It seems to be comprised of lots of oversized neighborhoods and poorly-defined subdivisions that leak and bleed into one another, without much to distinguish them individually. Stuck in traffic, sometimes it's alarmingly easy to lose track of where you are.

THE INSULARITY. When it's all here--the coast, the beach, the mountains, the desert, the forest, the city, the suburbs, the farmland--there's not much need to go anywhere else. And when a day's drive barely gets you across the state line anyway, why bother? As someone who grew up in the opposite corner of the country--in the Northeast, you can pass through three states over the course of a morning--the scale out here is still a wonder to me, but I can understand why it might discourage exploration. What I don't understand is the lack of curiosity about exploration or interest in what's beyond the borders of the nearest freeway...unless it's just been beaten out of people by the sprawl and the traffic. I'd understand that. 

THE OUTSIZE SELF-ESTEEM AND SENSE OF ENTITLEMENT. The "star system" was born here too--although "Hollywood" is more of a concept than a place nowadays --and it seems to have rubbed off on far too many people, even if they have no connection to Hollywood at all. There's very little reluctance to ask for privilege or special treatment, because people really believe they deserve it. Not everybody is a star here, but anybody can demand to be treated like one--and they frequently get their demands met. 

THE POLITICS. I have issues with the state as a whole on this matter, not just my region. The level of political dysfunction here is hard to fathom and even harder to explain, although almost everyone has a theory on it. All I can tell you is that our elected representatives don't represent, and considering how much lawmaking is placed directly in voters' hands through the initiative process, I'm not sure what they actually do at all. However, among other things, I'm sure they're at least partly responsible for the steep decline in the quality of public education here during the last couple of decades. When I moved here from Tennessee, I thought the political climate would be more compatible and the schools would be much worse. Although my blue-party leanings are a better fit here, I was way off about the schools.

All things considered, however, I could be in a much worse place, literally and figuratively. I don't love my two hours a day in commuting traffic, but I have a good job and a nice home (that I'll probably never be in a position to own, but that's another issue). And if I hadn't come here in 2002, I wouldn't have the second family that I joined in 2006--and having family around is the thing I love most about living in Southern California.

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10 Years in LA; The Love List

I've lived in Southern California ten years as of this week, which is as long as I've lived anywhere in my entire life, and it's one of the last places I'd ever have imagined I'd end up. Granted, I still might not end up here, literally; I hope I've still got a few good decades left, and I certainly I hope I'll be spending them with the native Southern Californian I married almost six years ago, and so any move I make away from this region will be one we make together.

Having said that, this is the first and only place I've ever lived in by my own choice, and it's the only place I've ever lived on my own. Even if I don't spend the rest of my life here, Los Angeles and its surroundings will always be meaningful to me because of that. I entered my forties here, but in many ways, I've grown up here

And so, on the occasion of our tenth anniversary together, here's the first half of my SoCal Top Ten: the good stuff.

FIVE THINGS I LOVE ABOUT SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

THE WEATHER. Yes, it's a cliche. And yes, we have mudslides and wildfires and earthquakes (but there's no such thing as "earthquake weather"). But we have days and weeks and months of cool, clear mornings and evenings, days that don't get unbearably hot, and minimal humidity. It's easy to adapt to it, and hard to think about readjusting to less perfectly temperate climate.

THE GEOGRAPHY. The variety within less than a hundred miles in any direction is marvelous. The coast, the beach, the mountains, the desert, the forest, the city, the suburbs, the farmland...it's all right here, and it's not hard to get to any of it.

THE ODD SENSE OF FAMILIARITY. Most of our visually-based popular culture--that is, movies and television--is created here, and it's not uncommon to visit someplace new and feel like you've seen it before. You probably have--it was on a screen somewhere, but it's not so new to you after all.

THE PEOPLE-WATCHING. That visually-based popular culture has done a lot to establish a particular L.A. "look"--and it's real. But on any given day, you'll probably see more people who DON'T conform to it than who do, and many of them--bless their hearts--are perfectly comfortable cultivating a look all their own. 

 
THE SENSE OF POSSIBILITY. The "California Dream" has probably always been just that, to be honest, and most people probably don't manage to get all that close to it. But it continues to have a hold on those who were born here and those who come here from everywhere, and it still encourages reinvention and exploration.

I came here ten years ago because my marriage was over (my first one--at that stage, I had no expectation there might be a second), my son was about to go off to university, and my extended family--my sister, her husband and kids, and our father--had already migrated to the West Coast. If you're going to reengineer your life, it's good to have a support system at hand, and it's very good to do it in a place that thrives on the very idea. It's not perfect, though--and that will be my next list.

(Note: Edited and re-posted to correct some serious formatting issues that were probably obvious only if you came here to view to post.)

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