It Fell into the Ocean (a.k.a Paseo Del Mar Incident)

It's banal to say that California is going to fall into the ocean. But, you know, it will. Probably not all of it at once (some people's fantasy) but chunks of it have fallen in.  In fact, it has happened many times and is happening now, and it's happened most recently about a mile from my home.  600 feet of Paseo del Mar (across from the nature preserve that I've blogged about) fell into the ocean a couple days ago. There are great photos taken for the Daily Breeze:  http://www.dailybreeze.com/news/ci_19378711

After several months of shifting, Paseo Del Mar in San Pedro slid into the ocean late Sunday afternoon, Nov. 20, 2011. (Chuck Bennett / Staff Photographer)

A Favorite Tree

This is a favorite tree of mine in the nature preserve near my home:

Here are some views from the preserve:

Celebrate Extinction

Let's hope that pantyhose disappear forever.  Pantyhose were awful for so many reasons, and I know exactly when I stopped wearing them.  July 1988.  I had just turned 25, and I had just moved to Los Angeles and decided never to wear them again. I didn't care if they came in a thousand colors and a zillion textures and were called tights.  A few of my employers (all men and lawyers) complained about my lack of pantyhose (the sheer, old lady kind) because they said I didn't look professional with bare legs.  My response to them:  you try wearing them.  They never mentioned the subject again. Below is a terrific example of advertising that no one could possibly believe:

Little Bee by Chris Cleave

I’m sure many reviews have been written about Little Bee, reviews by professionals and by those who don’t get paid to review novels.  Nonetheless, most everything that can be said about this novel probably has been said, so I will only make two points.

The first one is about writing. I prefer novels written in the third person, and the reason is that characters written in the third person don’t think the way they think in novels written in the first person.  What I mean is that third person narrators can think poetically, but when first person narrators do, it comes across as contrived. Little Bee is written in the first person, and Little Bee (meaning the character not the title) is from a village in Nigeria who spends two years in a detention center in England, yet her imagery, analogies, and metaphors reflect someone who is educated in a very western way and who has mastered subtleties of the English language; perhaps she’s a linguistic genius, but it doesn’t work for me.

The second point is about the issue of immigration.

“It doesn’t matter how you talk, does it?” she [female police officer] said.  “You’re a drain on resources.  The point is you don’t belong here.”

“But please, what does it mean?”  I said.  “What does it mean, to belong here?”

“Well, you’ve got to be British, haven’t you?  You’ve got to share our values.”

Of course, the officer has no idea how ironic being a “drain on resources” is because she isn’t thinking about how Europeans are draining the resources in Nigeria, but she’s emphasizing belong, and to an American ear, the exchange above sounds very strange though Little Bee’s question is excellent.  Perhaps substituting British and American will reveal why the exchange is awkward from an American perspective:

“Well, you’ve got to be American, haven’t you?  You’ve got to share our values.”

I have no idea what it really means to be American, and I have no idea what American values are.  To belong in the United States doesn’t require us to be anything in particular. To belong to many Americans would probably mean to be here legally. But what about people who are here illegally?  How do they belong?  They belong because they’re human beings. (This is stated in Little Bee several times.)  We are citizens of the world, and as the 21st Century progresses we will understand that countries' borders are obsolete, and the British officer’s reply will be enigmatic and more than a little confusing.