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Zero Tolerance Policy

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The Twin Towers Correctional Facility in Downtown Los Angeles

Martine likes to spend a day in downtown L.A. once a week. While there, she spends some time around the Twin Towers Correctional Facility operated by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. It holds more than 2,000 inmates. Crumpled up outside the jail are interesting sheets of paper which give a lurid picture of life in stir.

Today, Martine handed me an information sheet entitled “Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) Comprehensive Inmate Education.” It and other informative pieces of paper are tossed away by released inmates. At the top of the sheet is the usual administrative huffing and puffing by the Sheriff’s Department (which refers to itself as the LASD):

LASD maintains a ZERO TOLERANCE POLICY for sexual harassment or sexual abuse of all inmates in its custody.

This means you have the right to be free from sexual harassment and sexual abuse by anyone, including staff, volunteers, contractors, medical and mental health staff, and other inmates, while in LASD’s custody.

You have the right to report if you have been sexually abused/sexually harassed, or if you know of someone else who has been or is being sexually abused/sexually harassed. No one deserves to be sexually abused/sexually harassed.

You have the right to report if you have a suspicion or know of threats that you or someone else will be sexually abused/sexually harassed.

Of course, if you have a ZERO TOLERANCE POLICY, it pretty much means that it is probably widespread across the institution. It is typical that the prison administrators will wish the problem away by burying it in reams of paperwork, of which this Inmate Education sheet is an example. It gives detailed information on whom to contact and how. Also included are the following tips on how to protect yourself from being victimized:

  • Stay away from gambling or trading goods with other inmates.
  • Do not use drugs or alcohol [about which there is another ZERO TOLERANCE POLICY]. Being intoxicated puts you at higher risk for sexual abuse.
  • Do not accept gifts or offers of protection from other inmates.
  • Keep this information sheet with you for future reference.
  • There are PREA posters in each housing unit that provide this information.
  • You will also see a video about PREA in your housing unit that is played on a regular basis.
  • PREA is also discussed during town hall meetings with staff.

Nowhere is the point made that if you stay out of prison, you are more likely not to be raped, abused, or harassed.

Traffic Island Paradise

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The Traffic Island at the Corner of Ohio Avenue and Santa Monica Blvd

You have not heard me say many good things about the legions of homeless that live in the streets of Los Angeles. Today, I will make an exception. Two blocks east of me is a little traffic island where Ohio Avenue intersects at an angle with Santa Monica Blvd.

The City of Los Angeles does not get the credit for digging up the earth of the island and planting it with succulents and other water-saving plants. The man responsible is a homeless man who lives in a tent to the left of the traffic island. Martine and I have seen him at work planting and weeding.

It is more often the case that the homeless who live in tents in West Los Angeles are known for accumulations of garbage, vandalism, panhandling, and getting into fights with other homeless in the wee hours of the morning.

I have not spoken to the man who created this little garden, but I wish him well. May he find a home where his talent at gardening will be more appreciated. I also hope that some idiotic city administrator does not decide to dig up the garden and replace it with something more boring.

Pink Hubris

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Sophia Loren Giving a Busty Jayne Mansfield Serious Side-Eye

Jayne Mansfield was one of the sex queens of Hollywood, along with Marilyn Monroe. She looked even more overtly sexy than Marilyn, and she ended sadly, even as Marilyn did. Although it is not true that she was decapitated in a 1967 New Orleans auto accident, all manner of stories abounded regarding her life. Apparently both John and Robert Kennedy enjoyed her favors. She bared her all in a 1955 issue of Playboy. Several times when she was appearing in public, her top flew off, exposing her ample breasts to the waiting paparazzi.

I just finished reading a zine by David Hankins entitled “Pink Palace” about the house she lived in with her second husband, Hungarian-born body-builder Mickey Hargitay between 1957 and 1964. Martine found it on one of her walks and became absorbed in reading it. The author had fallen in love with Hargitay and Mansfield’s pink house on Sunset Boulevard and lovingly described its heart-shaped pool, shag-carpeted bathroom, its 700-pound chandelier, its many fireplaces, and the bits of quartz mixed with the pink paint to make it sparkle in the sunlight. There was even a fountain that spritzed pink Champagne.

Jayne in Her Heart-Shaped Tub (Note the Pink Shag Carpeting)

In addition to the grandiloquent fixtures of the house, Jayne and Mickey had a private zoo on the premises, which included rabbits, goats, monkeys, ocelots, a burro, an elephant, a water buffalo, as well as numerous dogs and cats. I was reminded of the Charles Foster Kane character in Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane who also had a zoo on the premises of Xanadu. He didn’t end well either.

All this is leading up in my mind to a Chinese expression. When the Chinese do not want to tempt fate by flaunting their prosperity, they say, “Bad rice! Bad rice!” There is something about a too-lavish lifestyle that makes you fear thunderbolts from the angry gods.

I am by no means a famous person, nor want to be. While it would seem nice to win loads of money in the lottery, I would be afraid of appearing to live too large. And no one who sees me as I am would think me a fashion plate—nor would they if I had the money to be one in fact. I’ve read too many ancient Greek tragedies not to be aware of the Erinyes, also known as the Furies and the Eumenides. Thank you, but I prefer to live small.

Bad rice, indeed!

Protective Detachment

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Brush Fire About Five Miles from My Front Door

There I was, siting and reading the essays in Joan Didion’s After Henry, when I suddenly found a perfect phrase to summarize the sang-froid Californians feel about earthquakes and wildfires:

The notion that land will be worth more tomorrow than it is worth today has been a real part of the California experience, and remains deeply embedded in the California mentality, but this seemed extreme, and it occurred to me that the buying and selling of houses was perhaps one more area in which the local capacity for protective detachment had come into play, that people capable of compartmentalizing the Big One [that is, earthquake] might be less inclined than others to worry about getting their money out of [a real estate investment].

People in other parts of the country have told me scores of times that California is going to “fall into the ocean,” as if we were all living on a thin shelf of unsteady earth stretched out over the Pacific Ocean. In actuality, our part of the state will, instead of falling into the ocean, slowly head north to Alaska—over a period of millions of years. No matter, I won’t be around to have to buy heavy parkas.

When growing up in Cleveland, I had a deathly fear of tornadoes. They frequently featured in my nightmares. Finally, on June 8, 1953, a large tornado tore through the West Side. As an eight-year-old, we visited a family friend whose two-story house was half a block from utter devastation. At the time, we lived on the East Side and suffered no damage; but that didn’t help my dreams any.

Freeway Damage from the Northridge Quake of 1994

Because I live on a large heavily populated plain just south of the Santa Monica Mountains, I have no reason to fear wildfires. But earthquakes are a different matter. The Sylmar Quake of 1971 scared the Bejeezus out of me, and the Northridge Quake of 1994 didn’t help matters. Perhaps I don’t feel Didion’s protective detachment because I wasn’t born in California as she was.

Where the Streets Have No Name

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David Hockney’s “Pearblossom Highway, 11-18 April 1986, #2”

This the way I remember it: the way it was decades ago. Yesterday, Martine and I took a road trip to Littlerock, California. Why? We were looking for smoked Hungarian sausage (füstölt kolbász) which was no longer available from our usual source, as the Alpine Village Market in Torrance was no more. I had a distant memory of the Valley Hungarian Sausage & Meat Company in Littlerock, where I had purchased some good kolbász years ago, when my mother was still alive. Then I heard from my brother Dan of a place called Tibor’s that sold kolbász somewhere in the Antelope Valley.

So I took a chance and drove along California 14 (the Antelope Valley Freeway) with its vanishing lanes past the Vasquez Rocks where Captain Kirk battled the reptilian Gorn on Cestus III, past the Red Rover Mine Road and Acton, until we got yo California 138, the Pearblossom Highway, which runs from the 14 all the way to the I-15 at Victorville.

“Where did all those people come from?” I wondered as I saw all the suburban developments that have sprung up in what is now called Canyon Country. I continued asking the same question as I saw how the Pearblossom Highway was no longer “Where the Streets Have No Name,” as Bono and the U2 sang.

Well, the Streets Now Have Names

On the way to Tibor’s, we stopped at Charlie Brown Farms—also in Littlerock—to have lunch and browse around. We quickly realized several characteristics common to the people who now lived in the area:

  1. Everyone was at least thirty pounds overweight, even the kiddies
  2. If they had any discretionary income, it was spent at the local tattoo parlor
  3. To a man, woman, and child, they looked liked bad ass wannabes

We located Tibor’s easily: It was the same as the old Valley Hungarian Sausage & Meat Company. Unfortunately, it was not well stocked. When asked for füstölt kolbász, they said they didn’t have any in stock. That’s kind of like finding no tortillas in a Mexican food store or pasta in an Italian deli. We bought some other kolbász, which turned out to be good. But it was an awfully long drive for slim pickings.

Still, it got Martine out of the house, and she enjoyed the drive to an area she had never seen before. And the California poppies along the road were like golden explosions of faerie light.

Atmospheric Rivers

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The Engine That Created California’s Storms This Year

Climate change is giving us a whole new language to describe the giant rain/snowstorms that have pummeled California since November 2022. Originally, there were the Pineapple Expresses which dumped large amounts of precipitation. There were maybe one or two in a rainy season, and just as likely none. Now the term Atmospheric River is used by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). And then there are the Bomb Cyclones, fast-developing storms that occur when atmospheric pressure drops at least 24 millibars over a 24-hour period. Sometimes, all three terms are used to describe the same storm.

This year, California has experienced thirteen Atmospheric River storms this rainy season, dumping a record amount of precipitation in the form of rain and snow. I was watching a news report from Mammoth Lakes today which claimed that over 700 inches of snow have fallen in the area so far.That’s over 58 feet in all. Fortunately, it didn’t all fall at one time.

I suspect that we are probably at or near the end of these storms for this rainy season. These events have convinced me that there is risk entailed by siting a house in a low river valley or by a non-rocky hillside. Or by living in a trailer park.

The good news is that California agriculture will probably recover stronger than ever, except for those crops that don’t like too much water.

Worrying About the Next Glass of Water

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Lake Mead Continues to Shrink

The Sierra snowpack that is California’s main source of water is deeper this year than at any time within memory. We cannot say, unfortunately, that the long drought is finally over. We began this rainy season in the red as a result of overpumping groundwater. Somehow, we would have to restore the groundwater that has been pumped in the last several drought years. It’s like making a deposit in the bank for the lean years to come.

In Southern California, most of our water comes from two sources. First is the California Aqueduct which draws water from the Sierra snowpack and sends it some 400 miles (640 km) to the reservoirs that supply Los Angeles. The second source is another aqueduct which brings water west from the Colorado River. That source is problematical because the Rocky Mountains have not had a particularly good year; and the states along the Colorado River are feuding with one another over water rights.

The above photo shows graphically how the water level of Lake Mead has shrunk over the last few years. What used to be a rush of water through the spillways is now a mere trickle. I wonder how much winds up crossing the border into Mexico and the Gulf of California.

Is our wet winter something we are likely to experience in future years? And will the Rockies share in the wealth? Or will the present greenery turn bone dry and feed the wildfires of the future?

Visiting the Jurassic

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The Museum of Jurassic Technology in Culver City, California

I spent several hours this afternoon visiting a storefront in Culver City, right near the corner of Bagley Avenue and Venice Boulevard, that goes by the name the Museum of Jurassic Technology. Why Jurassic? Does it contain only exhibits relating to the earth between 201 and 145 million years ago? Was there any technology to be found during that period? Were there even any humans extant during that period?

Whatever may be implied by the name, it was a real museum in that it was a collection of wonders, concentrating on smaller exhibits given the size of the property. The St. Patrick’s Day crowd consisted almost exclusively of millennials, who wandered the dark and twisting corridors of the museum peering at such exhibits as miniatures by an Armenian artist named Hagop Sandaldjian, such as this representation of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves atop the horizontal eye of a needle:

There was an unusual collection of objects gathered from various Los Angeles Mobile Home Parks, together with an attempt to account for a philosophy of trailer living as a form of reaction to the expanding universe. The museum website quotes an Estonian historian named Ants Viires on the subject:

[T]ime ravages everything, our person, our experience, our material world. In the end everything will be lost. In the end there is only the darkness. …and despite the apparent fullness and richness of our lives there is, deposited at the core of each of us, a seed of this total loss of this inevitable and ultimate darkness.

Another miniaturist on display is the work of Henry Dalton (1829-1911) consisting of images created from diatoms and the scales of butterfly wings, such as the following:

To view these works, it was necessary to view them through a microscope. There were about eight of them in a row, each pointed at a separate microminiature.

On the second floor of the museum is a little courtyard where tea and cookies are served amid the cooing of doves and the gurgling of a small fountain.

It was a fun place to visit. Not all the exhibits worked, but then that is true pretty much everywhere. I walked out of the museum with a sense of wonderment that was quickly dispelled by the rush hour traffic on Venice Boulevard.

The Snowcapped Mountains of L.A.

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The San Gabriel Mountains Seen from Altadena

This has been the coldest winter I can remember since I first moved to Southern California in 1966. It has been wet, too—but not quite the wettest. That honor belongs to several winters in the 1970s and early 1980s, and most particularly the winter of 2004-2005.

As I drove to the Original Farmers Market at 3rd and Fairfax, I saw the peaks of the San Gabriel Mountains covered with a heavy mantle of snow. The mercury stood in the low 50s Fahrenheit (or low teens Celsius).

Southern California winters usually consist of periods of cold interspersed with several warm spells, where the temperature can go as high as the 80s and 90s Fahrenheit (or 30s Celsius). For the last few months, however, I have been wearing long-sleeves shirts, a wool vest or sweater, and a windbreaker. In December, my gas bill topped $365.00—a new record!

I feel sorry for tourists who come to L.A. to bask in the sunshine and spend some time tanning at the beach. They will likely encounter icy winds and blowing sand.

A Grier-Musser Valentine

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Valentine’s Day Memorabilia at the Grier-Musser Museum

On Sunday, Martine and I stopped in at the Grier-Musser Museum in the shadow of Downtown L.A. to see their Valentine’s Day memorabilia. Of late, Susan and Rey Tejada have been concentrating on paper in the form of old-fashioned images on postcards, greeting cards, and books—especially with pop-up illustrations.

There’s something about seeing this type of material in the Victorian mansion on Bonnie Brae Street that sends you back in time. Afterwards, we sat down with Rey and Susan over cookies and punch and talked for a couple of hours.

Although I got Martine a card for Valentine’s Day, we both decided to go out for lunch on the day after, when we were less likely to run into crowds. So tomorrow we will have a nice English lunch at Ye Olde King’s Head in Santa Monica. It is a great place to have fish and chips or bangers and mash or Cornish pasties. Fortunately, one is not likely to encounter such downmarket English cuisine items as spaghetti sandwiches or baked beans on toast.

Martine and I hope you enjoyed this little gem of a holiday. Why do I call it that? I would rather honor the love I feel than some bogus political or historical event, such as Columbus “discovering” America. After all, wasn’t he met at the beach by the local residents?