About This Site

I stopped adding new posts to "Angels and Vagabonds" very early in 2007 and it has functioned solely as an archive since then. However, because I recently posted a link to this site on my Facebook page, it occurred to me that I should offer a brief account of why I created this journal and what I sought to accomplish with it.

In the main, "Angels and Vagabonds" chronicled my weekend travels around Los Angeles and Southern California with my wife and daughter from May 2005 to January 2007. Writing it provided a creative outlet and some relief from a workaday life that continued to dominate my time and energy during that period. I also intended to pay homage to a favorite writer, the late Los Angeles Times columnist, Jack Smith, whose writings over the years -- particularly those which reflected his affectionate view of family life and his strong sense of place as an Angeleno -- gave me enormous pleasure as a reader.

Writing this online journal or "blog" was an experiment that, in the end, did not succeed. The blog form favors brevity, controversy and up-to-the minute timeliness, not wandering essay-length pieces with no particular link to current events. However, I enjoyed living and writing these essays, and leave them up for the occasional passerby who may take some pleasure from them.

I have also created an artifact for my daughter, which was perhaps the main point all along.

Field of Stones

There’s a haunted hill in East Los Angeles where I sometimes go to look at stones and brood. There are angels and Virgins carved in granite, their faces serene. There are stone crosses, many of them Celtic. The old Irish families of Los Angeles are buried there. It is the final resting place of my father, my grandfather and my great-grandfather.

I came very late one day last week. The sun was setting and the gates would soon close. But it was the eighth anniversary of my father’s death. A hurried visit was better than none at all.

I don’t put great stock in gravesite visits, at least not the rational part of me. But I find myself drawn to this place at times. I come to talk to my father. I can talk to him anywhere, of course, but I come to the haunted ground for anniversaries and for times when the conversation is serious.

I had a health crisis myself a few years after his death and came to this field of stones back then to talk with him about it. It helped me focus. The memories of the stoicism and courage with which he faced his own illnesses and physical crises came back to me with great clarity there. Standing there talking to him, I made the decisions I had to make for myself.

There was no crisis this time, just the anniversary. We talked as the stones took on a reddish hue. It came to me that I now understood better how he must have felt when he was in his mid-fifties, as I am now, and still with heavy loads to carry at work and as a parent. Things that seemed unclear then were clear to me now. Things that were invisible then were now very much in sight.

I reflected on how much I missed him, but I also reflected on his persistence – the ways in which he always seems to be with me. Even now, he is a vivid presence and comfort in times of trouble, just as he was in life. I often think back to the things he did and said in life and can still see his expressions and hear the pleasant timbre of his voice. His presence is no less vivid to me when I am at my best. Perhaps those are the moments when my sense of him is strongest.

It was almost dark when we finished our talk and I turned and walked carefully through the stones and back to my car. I made it out just before the gates were closed. I rode the freeways home with a sense of peace.

The Camellia Forest

Descanso Gardens is a beautiful and serene spot, especially in winter when the camellias bloom. However, there are some surprisingly dark elements – trickery, trauma and trouble, to name a few – in the histories of both the place and its most famous flower. It has even been suggested that the Descanso Garden camellias are responsible for the demise of a fabled L.A. newspaper.

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According to some accounts, it was trickery that brought flowering camellias to Europe from Asia in the first place. When Europeans began to develop a taste for tea in the latter half of the 1600s, Asian merchants hard-pressed to meet demand were said to have padded shipments of the much-prized tea plant (also a member of the genus Camellia) with specimens of its not-so-tasty flowering cousins. European tea-plant purveyors may have been cheated in the process, but the beauty of the flowering camellia species came to be noticed and valued.

In Europe and North America, the fame and appeal of camellias as flowering plants grew over time and reached something of a fever pitch in the 1840s, when it was said that every true Parisian gentleman sported a camellia as a boutonniere and Alexandre Dumas (fils) was moved to write La dame aux camélias, the story of a man in love with a courtesan.

Like flowers, fads bloom and then fade quickly. So it was with the camellia, which lost popularity until the late 1930s, around the time a newspaper publisher in Los Angeles purchased an oak-studded Shangri-La in the San Rafael Hills, west of Pasadena and the Arroyo Seco.

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The 160-acre hillside parcel acquired by Los Angeles Daily News publisher E. Manchester Boddy in 1938 had once been part of the vast Rancho San Rafael holdings of Jose Maria Verdugo and his descendants. The land itself had been traumatized 60 years prior to Boddy’s purchase by a great brush fire that began in the summer months of 1878 and burned wildly until the autumn rains came. In the process, some 60,000 acres in the San Rafael Hills and the La Canada and La Crescenta valleys were turned to ash.


Most of the large grove of ancient oaks on what would later become the Descanso parcel was consumed by the fire, but a new grove – younger, not so tall, but denser – soon grew in its place. This is the grove that inspired Boddy with an idea that he hoped would transform the Shangri-La he had just purchased into an economically self-sustaining proposition. A man with a strong interest in horticulture, Boddy knew that partial shade and filtered sunlight provided optimum conditions for cultivating camellias and he began buying them in bulk to plant in his oak grove.

The trouble that befell Japanese and Japanese-Americans in California and other West Coast states in the early months of World War II gave Boddy’s efforts an unexpected boost. He vastly increased the number of camellias under cultivation at his estate by purchasing the inventories of Japanese nursery-owners as they liquidated their businesses prior to internment.

And so the Descanso Gardens forest-within-a-forest, a winter profusion of blooms under the shade of California oaks, came to be.

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Boddy came to newspapering from the world of book publishing in 1926, when he acquired the Los Angeles Daily News [no relation to today’s San Fernando Valley-based newpaper of the same name] from a Vanderbilt heir. He quickly turned it into one of the most unusual and interesting newspapers in Los Angeles history.

It was unusual in several respects. For on thing, it was a tabloid. For another, it was printed on peach-colored paper. But perhaps the most unusual thing about it was its liberal political orientation. It was a Democratic paper in a Republican town and Republican state. And it was influential. Many historical accounts credit a series of Daily News editorials in 1936 as having a hand in the Democratic electoral landslide in California that pivotal year.

It also boasted a host of colorful characters on staff in the newsroom at Pico and Los Angeles, including Jack Smith, later a nationally-renowned columnist for the Los Angeles Times and one of the most talented writers ever to pound the keys for an L.A. publication. Smith later wrote that “it may be that few of us were perfectly sober when we put the Daily News to bed, but it was a wonderful paper, full of humor, youthful energy, good writing and irreverence.”


Boddy’s wartime purchase of tens of thousands of camellias at fair-market value from Japanese-American growers facing internment caused much comment at the time. A few years later, when the paper ran into financial difficulties (its demise came in 1954, when it was merged into the Los Angeles Mirror), some critics suggested camellias were to blame.

Years later, Boddy denied this claim, but went on to assert that Descanso Gardens and its camellia forest would be remembered long after the Daily News was forgotten.

Boddy sold Descanso Gardens to Los Angeles County in 1952 and retired to a ranch in northern San Diego County, where he resumed his horticultural interests, including the cultivation of camellias.


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My wife and I visited Descanso Garden on a recent Saturday, a mild and sunny day with an intensely blue sky. From the entrance, we followed a path that skirts the oak forest as it meanders up the gentle slope of a ridge marking the park’s southern boundary. A rose garden on the right was fallow and forlorn, dormant until spring. A line of sycamores wore the bright yellow raiment of early winter.

We followed the path to an observation station midway up the ridge, then looked back down the slope. On the horizon, the San Gabriels were soft brown crags under the bright sun. Immediately before us, shaded by the ridge, the Descanso oak canopy was a rolling sea of greens and grays. We left the platform, then moved down a path that disappeared into the shadowy glade.

We walked a long time without seeing any camellias. It was early in the season, I knew, but I began to worry. I had described the beauty of the camellia bloom under the oak canopy in extravagant terms to my wife and didn’t want to disappoint her

As is her wont, my wife had moved ahead of me and soon disappeared beyond a turn in the path. When I rounded the turn, she was nowhere to be seen. I called. Much to my relief, she answered. I followed her voice, moving off the path into a thick copse of trees and underbrush. There she was in soft, filtered light, surrounded by camellias, small blossoms and larger ones, both low and high above us on branches full of dark green leaves, the flowers resplendent in shades of light pink and hot pink and ghostly white and red-and-white.


My wife smiled at me and pointed at a spot above my head. A gorgeous white on a high branch was in full bloom against a patch of sky. The petals in the center had a golden glow, light refracted through nectar. We stood in the quiet of the glade, enjoying the sense of peace and rest. From the look in her eyes, I could tell my wife was not disappointed at all.

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A Note on Sources/For Further Reading: Douglas G. Thompson’s book, Descanso Gardens, Its History and Camellias (Los Angeles, 1962) is out-of-date now, but is the only book-length treatment available in the Los Angeles Public Library. It has a good general history of camellias and offers a detailed history of the Rancho San Rafael property and Boddy’s horticultural operations there.


Available in the Los Angeles Times archives are relatively recent (and excellent) pieces on Descanso Gardens by Irene Garcia (March 5, 1998) and Cecilia Rasmussen (June 6, 2004). Rasmussen’s piece is particularly informative on the history of both Boddy and his newspaper, the old Los Angeles Daily News, as is an excellent on-line history by longtime L.A. journalist Rip Rense. Finally, Descanso Gardens maintains its own very informative Web site, descansogardens.org

Click on photos to enlarge.

The Dreamer

It stands at the edge of a parking lot in a modest shopping center near the intersection of East 103rd Street and Compton Avenue in the heart of Watts. The black granite pedestal bears up a great hand in bronze, opening to free a bird. Below and behind, on a long, slanting trail of granite, the flow of words begins.

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

From the very beginning, there is poetry – and there is insistence:

We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.

There is also a firm rejection of hatred and violence:

In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

The speaker is not a hater, but a man of hope, a prophet, a seer:

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. I say to you today my friends – so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

And in the end, the speaker leaves his text behind, taking the words straight from his heart:

This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day…

This will be the day, this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning "My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring!"

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.

Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado. Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.

But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi — from every mountainside.

Let freedom ring. And when this happens, and when we allow freedom to ring — when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children — black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics - will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

The entire speech as delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963 – every word of it -- is carved into the granite block at the edge of the parking lot near 103rd and Compton, for all passersby by to see and stop and read and reflect, if they are so inclined. A small plate in the sidewalk identifies the sculpture as “Symbols of Unity – The Idea of Freedom.” The artist is identified as Charles Dickson. It is noted, finally, that the sculpture is dedicated to the “life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.”

Date Night at "The Grove"

I had a date Friday night – with my wife.

Because our daughter was in Santa Barbara visiting my mother and my sisters, my wife and I were at loose ends. Dinner and a movie seemed in order.

We settled on the movie quickly enough (“Dreamgirls”), but disagreed on where to eat and where to see the show. I suggested dinner at a sidewalk café in Los Feliz, followed by the movie at the Vista, a baroque and charming movie palace relic nearby. My wife shook her head. She preferred “The Grove.”

I regard the “The Grove” with a certain amount of distaste, but I am not a foolish man. I acceded to my wife’s wishes.

“The Grove” is a shopping mall disguised to look like a city street. The storefronts come in a mix of styles, but the overall result has a Disneyland feel. The mall opened in 2002 next to the Farmer’s Market in the Fairfax District just east of Beverly Hills and was an instant success. One of the most popular retail destinations in metropolitan L.A., it packs in the crowds, particularly on weekend nights and during the holiday season. A plush and very comfortable multiplex with stadium seating is part of the draw.

Why the distaste for a place so many people clearly find very pleasing? For me, much of it has to do with the architecture, which completely turns its back on Third Street. There is only one entrance on Third, and no windows -- just a warehouse-like series of facades that double as giant billboards. This is the “urban fortress” approach to retailing, with a barrier erected against the street and the surrounding neighborhood.

For those inside, the presence of a barrier may be reassuring. My own reaction is a twinge of claustrophobia. I’m in a big crowd and there are only so many exits. And the sociology -- let's face it -- is bad. This is an island, an enclave, an imposition on a neighborhood, a walled and guarded traffic magnet that stands apart.

Inside the mall, the “street” is winding, but very short. A double-decked trolley provides a comically brief trip to nowhere. There is a small park with a big fountain and piped-in Sinatra. Ersatz snow “falls” at Christmas, fed by a system of pipes along the roofline. The entire experience is engineered. Much of it seems adventitious.

My wife and daughter like it, however. They seem to like it quite a bit. There is a Nordstrom, an Apple Store and an American Girl store. The stadium seating in the multiplex almost ensures an unobstructed view. And it’s barely ten minutes from where we live.

The proximity helped Friday night, since I was delayed at work and we had to rush. We decided to see the movie first, then eat. We arrived at the parking structure 45 minutes before the movie’s start. The electronic bulletin board showed available spaces only on Level 8, the parking structure’s roof. We were already well inside the structure and it was impossible to turn around at that point. With no alternative, we raced to the top, only to circle for 10 minutes before we got lucky and a space opened up in front of us.

We made it to the theater in time to find good seats and settle in. I watched the theater fill up. It was a mature audience, largely comprised of people (like me) old enough to remember the Motown era. The lights went down and we were held spellbound for the next two hours-plus by a high-energy, well-staged and brilliantly acted musical, an entertaining melodrama that incidentally recalled an era and made some significant points about race and popular culture in America. Beyonce Knowles looked lovely and sang well, Eddie Murphy acted up a storm, and newcomer Jennifer Hudson dominated the movie with her big voice and strong personality.

We left the theater exhilarated and made our way to the restaurant next door, the Farm of Beverly Hills, for a late supper. The Farm falls squarely in the “clean, well-lighted place” category and the food is quite good. My wife had a small smoked-salmon pizza and I had ravioli in a garlic-and-cream sauce. We found ourselves talking about our daughter. Nice as it was to have some time to ourselves, we missed her.

After dinner we walked a little. I realized that my attitude toward The Grove had begun to soften. Our evening had been undeniably pleasant. All the same, I much prefer places where the pedestrian culture is more genuine, places like Old Town Pasadena, the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, and El Paseo and Paseo Nuevo in Santa Barbara. They all make use of the existing grid. There is no separation from the surrounding neighborhood and the ebb and flow of life on city sidewalks.

The evening’s high point (literally and figuratively) came when we returned to the roof of the parking structure to reclaim our car. The night was cold and clear and Los Angeles was a carpet of lights that stretched in every direction. Century City glittered to the southwest, Hollywood to the north, downtown L.A. well to the east.

My wife leaned into my shoulder as we took in the view.

“This is beautiful,” she said. And it was.

December Light

From "Light and Sky -- Images of L.A."

There are moments when it's hard to tell where Disney Hall ends and the sky begins.

A Ghost of Christmas Past

I had a visitation from a Christmas ghost today. It came as I drove by the striking Art Deco palace that used to house the Bullocks Wilshire department store, but now serves as the library for Southwestern Law School. The Christmas memories in part come from the fact that Bullocks Wilshire was my grandmother’s favorite store. When I was a child, she would sometimes take me in tow there on Christmas shopping expeditions or lunch outings in the famous Tea Room. But even more, my memories of the place come from having worked there summers and over Christmas break in my college years.

I was a “sales associate” in the Gift Gallery, a long, brightly lit corridor that ran along the western wing of the building, between Cosmetics and Men’s Clothing. We sold an incredible variety of beautiful things in the Gallery – objets d’art of crystal, porecelain, celadon, lacquerware and rare woods. I learned more than I wanted to on subjects I cared little about – stemware, flatware, place settings, linens. We dealt with a lot of brides-to-be and their mothers.

I would have preferred Men’s Clothing, but that was for serious sales professionals, not moonlighting college students.

Working there was not always pleasant. The carriage trade could be very demanding. Still, there was the diversion provided by the occasional celebrity sighted unaccountably far from Beverly Hills – a maturely beautiful Audrey Hepburn; a friendly and unpretentious Diana Ross, an eerily quiet and withdrawn Donald Sutherland. I remember being charmed by a vivacious and good-humored elderly woman, who handed me a charge card that read “Miss Irene Dunne.” The most boorish celebrity was Peter Pitchess, then nearing the end of his long tenure as Los Angeles County Sheriff. He was rude and loud and did not suffer gladly the measured pace of the elderly women who staffed Courtesy Wrap.

The only time I felt fear or awe, however, was due not to the way the patron acted, but who she was. One day I assisted a pleasant but very decisive matron with a purchase. I felt a brief flurry of nerves when I saw the name on the charge card she handed me – “Mrs. Norman Chandler.” Evidently, my awe derived from the sense that I was in the presence of someone truly powerful.

But Christmas was rough. Even in a hoity-toity store like Bullocks Wilshire, the crowds were heavy and constant in the Christmas season. People would pull at you all the time. More than once, I found myself pulled by different customers trying to go in different directions. The Gallery floor was hard and we were on our feet all day long. The worst part, however, was the noise. Polished floors and mirrored walls magnified the non-stop chatter. By the time I got home, I was bone-tired, pulled apart, and afflicted with a buzzing in my head that faded only slowly.

And then there were moments that make me smile even now. One day I found myself helping a tall, gorgeous brunette. She was perhaps in her late twenties and her voice had a Seven Sisters tone. She had come to the store on a Quest for the Perfect Vase. She gave “vase” a pronunciation that would have put William F. Buckley to shame: VAHHHZZZ. Even so, she had a great deal of difficulty making her choice. She also kept repeating her irritating pronunciation. A moment finally came when I couldn’t stop myself. “You don’t mind if I call it VASE, do you?” I used the standard California pronunciation, with a long “A”, “vase” as rhymed with “face.”

My patron pulled up sharply. A range of emotions played over her face. I readied myself for an explosion and wondered how hard it would be to find another job. Then she suddenly broke into a smile. A soft, almost seductive smile. She reached out and touched my arm. “Fine, so long as we understand each other,” she said, a twinkle in her eye, a hint of laughter in her voice. She made her choice shortly thereafter and the rest of the transaction was easy and friendly. She turned out to be all right, despite the Seven Sisters voice.

And she was drop-dead gorgeous. To this day, I can still remember that soft smile and her touch on my arm. I guess that makes her my Ghost of Christmas Past.

The copper-sheathed Bullocks Wilshire tower was completed in 1929 and the store reigned as a premier luxury retailer during the heyday of Los Angeles glamour. Within decades, however, the center of Southland affluence shifted well to the west, and the BW star faded. The final indignity came in 1992, when the store was looted during the rioting that followed the Rodney King verdicts. Its retail life ended shortly thereafter. It was reborn a few years later as the library for the nearby Southwestern Law School, the function it continues to serve today.

Old Friends

I don’t know why I find it hard to accept the idea that trees have a life cycle. Perhaps it's just that their journey seems to proceed at a vastly slower pace than ours. But their lives are of course finite and that has important implications for the tree canopy in Los Angeles, as recent newspaper coverage reminds us.

A major story on the topic appeared in the "Home" section of the Los Angeles Times Nov. 23, written by a very talented reporter, Emily Green. Green began her story this way:

It is a wistful event when a wildflower fades, and distressing when a shrub punks out, but it is hard to capture the sense of loss when a good tree finally quits. Whether we are conscious of it or not, we time our lives in sympathy with trees. We know our streets by the fluttering soldiers that line them. A blue haze of jacarandas declares summer on one block, while the flashing of a jay from an oak announces autumn on the next.

The older the tree, the deeper the associations. So it seems unthinkable that an old tree might die, or in the case of our frontyard parkway trees, entire stretches of them at a time.

According to Green, the simultaneous demise of "entire stretches" of L.A. street trees is a real prospect here, as the current generation of Angelenos has evidently not done enough to ensure a replacement for today’s canopy, largely planted in the middle decades of the last century and before. There is hope, however, in the form of programs that aim to make up for lost time, most notably Mayor Villaraigosa’s “Million Trees L.A.” initiative, which incorporates a number of concepts for new street and residential planting, including the key concept of “succession planting.”

The art to succession planting is creating a multilayered generation of trees so when a grand old specimen reaches the end of its life, there is a strong family line behind it. What we need to do now isn't fire up buzz saws, but look at where else succession trees might go, consider timing by five-, 10- and 15-year intervals, what the space will allow, and how the property will feel when the biggest tree eventually comes out.

The stakes are high, Green reminds us:

Trees sequester air pollution, prevent erosion and absorb rain that would otherwise become storm-water runoff. Their leaves become soil conditioner. Trees reduce summer electricity bills by 30%, muffle bad sounds and fill up with enchanting song birds. Trees beautify communities. They are the only city assets that increase with value with age.

Interestingly, one tree that will have little or no role in officially sanctioned efforts to preserve the canopy is its most familiar member, an L.A. icon, the stately palm. Green notes that earlier this month, following a recommendation from the city planning department, the Los Angeles City Council voted to discourage the planting of new palms in favor of broad-leaf shade trees.

The palm tree’s fall from L.A. grace has also been catalogued smartly by Jennifer Steinhauer in the New York Times, who began her Nov. 26 story with a mordant lede: “The palm tree, like so much here, rose to fame largely because of vanity and image control, then met its downfall when the money ran out.”

Sounds a bit like the Great Gatsby, arboreal division. In Steinhauer’s version of history, “land barons relocating to Los Angeles and Hollywood from the East decided that palm trees denoted the easy life, and began planting them at their home and offices…”.

But times have changed. Today’s more enlightened city fathers are cognizant of the palm tree's many deficiencies. Its long fronds dry up and fall to the ground in strong winds, bringing harm to parked cars and sometimes even pedestrians. They are much poorer than broad-leaf shade trees at cleansing carbon monoxide from the air. They provide far less shade and do less to retard heat build-up over the city’s asphalt-covered surface.

And they are high maintenance. Yes, we’re talking dollars:

Palms are hard to care for, so hard that the city has a line in its tree-trimming budget just for them. Last year, it was approximately $385,000, but proper care dictates an expense of about $630,000 per year, said Nazario Sauceda, the assistant director of the bureau of street services in the city’s Department of Public Works.

Many of the trees planted in the 1950s “are getting toward the end of their lives,” Mr. Lai said. “Some are 80 to 100 feet high and 70 years old, and these are not self-cleaning palms,” which means they need maintenance to remove old fronds.

Last year, the city removed nearly 8,000 cubic yards of dried palm fronds from the public right of way, Mr. Sauceda said.

I would offer some quibbles to Steinhauer's account. Palm trees may not be native to the Los Angeles basin or coastal valleys, but many, particularly the Washingtonia variety, are California “in-migrants,” as it were, with a point of origin no more distant than the Mojave or the Coachella deserts. That certainly gives them a stronger claim to exist here than crape myrtles, which Steinhauer erroneously lists as indigenous, but which in fact originate from China, Korea and Japan.

And then there’s the following Steinhauer jibe:

For Americans looking for personal reinvention, palm trees are part of the physical evidence that Los Angeles is the right place to be, up there with the Hollywood sign peeking out from Beachwood Canyon and swimming pools that shimmer in October.

Yes, life here is one big Nathaniel West novel, just as New York Times editors constantly seem to imagine. Of course, as a fourth-generation Angeleno, I might have to call in the movers if “personal reinvention” is the mandate.

I’m kidding a little. I’m actually an admirer of Steinhauer’s coverage of Los Angeles and Southern California, which is generally excellent. And there’s undoubted merit to the point of view she’s reporting on here. There is a certain falsity underlying the palm’s dominance of the city’s skyline. It is indeed a reflection of deliberate efforts to project a paradisiacal image of L.A. that simply isn’t true. And yes, in a financially hard-pressed municipality, costs have to be questioned and justified. Finally, there is simply no disputing the notion that shade and air quality are far more important concerns than romance or nostalgia.

But perhaps a native can be forgiven a certain regret at the palm’s fall from favor. I live on the edge of Windsor Square, where the palms predate World War I. They are old friends and they are beautiful (even if some are showing signs of great age and a few are visibly dying). Also remarkably beautiful are the palm groves of Elysian Park, the palm triplets that line the Wilshire Boulevard median along the Miracle Mile and the famous and much-photographed stand of palms at Venice Beach. I can’t help it – I can’t imagine L.A. without these wonderful trees.

Pictured, fall foliage on Norton Avenue in Windsor Square, with a sweet gum tree and a date palm side-by-side. Nearby, fan palms loom high over Fifth Street.

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Another old friend has been on my mind in recent days – Bill Bamattre, who resigned yesterday as chief of the Los Angeles Fire Department.

Like Bernie Parks, Bill and I are alumni of Daniel Murphy High School, an all-boys Catholic school near the Miracle Mile. I graduated just a year ahead of Bill. We weren’t close friends, but we served together in student government, where Bill was always a voice of reason and good sense. I think you’ll get fundamentally the same description of Bill from anyone who knew him in those days. What was most remarkable about him was not the fact that he was both a star athlete and scholastically brilliant, but that there was never the slightest indication that any of this went to his head. It would be hard to imagine a nicer or more unpretentious guy. Among Murphy students, he was widely and genuinely liked and admired, for good reason.

I ran into Bill a couple of years ago at a Murphy reunion and was pleased to encounter the same warmth and cordiality I remembered from high school.

It’s been unpleasant to watch Bill’s march along the plank in recent weeks, with bloviating pols pushing at him from behind. I don’t know what it will take to change the problematic culture of the LAFD, but it did not escape my notice that even some of Bill’s harshest critics praised the operational excellence that is his legacy as chief. For that, all of us who live in this city should acknowledge a debt of gratitude. And Bill can count on his old friends remembering him as fondly as ever.

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Green, Emily. "Planting the Future One Tree at a Time." Los Angeles Times, November 23, 2006.

Steinhauer, Jennifer. "City Says Its Urban Jungle Has Little Room For Palms." New York Times, November 26, 2006.

Helfand, Duke, and McGreevy, Patrick. "Fire Chief Bamattre to Step Down Jan. 1." Los Angeles Times, December 2, 2006

One Morning Ten Years Ago

It was in the pre-dawn hours one morning 10 years ago this week that my wife said to me, "It's time," and we made our quick, anxious drive through dark and nearly empty streets. Thirteen hours later, with the help of a marvelous OB/GYN and two nurses, someone new entered our lives. On being introduced, she gave me a look that said, "What's this all about?" I don't know that I'll ever be able to answer that question, a poor way to repay someone who has made my life vastly richer and more interesting.

Full Moon, High Water

Most cultures have a harvest festival, but few are as charming as the Thai festival of Loy Krathong, traditionally celebrated the week of November’s full moon.

Loy Krathong’s origins are tied to the end of the rainy season and the completion of the main rice harvest. The themes are familiar – purification, atonement, homage to the spirits of Thailand’s great rivers. In legend, the first Loy Krathong occurred in ancient times when the beautiful young Brahmin wife of a king fashioned a small boat of banana leaves, flowers, carved fruits and candles. She then lit the candles and set the boat adrift in the river. The king was so impressed that he ordered all his subjects to do the same.

In Thailand, the rivers shimmer with light the night of Loy Krathong, creating a festival considered one of Asia’s most beautiful.

A dearth of suitable rivers constrains Los Angeles Thais, but they celebrate Loy Krathong with panache nevertheless. In North Hollywood, Wat Thai Los Angeles goes into full festival mode, A parking lot becomes a bazaar, serving up Thai food and Thai goods, including silk and cotton apparel and an amazing variety of amulets.


Today there were two stages on the temple grounds – Thai pop and hip hop at one, Thai classical music and dance at the other. Wat Thai School famously sends it classical dancers and musicians to Thailand every summer, where they are heard and viewed by appreciative audiences across the country. The interest of Los Angeles Thais in holding on to Thai culture is a source of pride back home.

Thai classical dance is characterized by extraordinary beauty and grace. Though strange to occidental ears, Thai music has an otherworldly beauty that makes a strong impression.

The Loy Krathong celebration at Wat Thai continues through tomorrow.