I should clarify. The kind of moment I was thinking of, as I and I assume most others experience now and then, includes a sense of shame. Shame is why the shameful thing we said or did sometimes pops into our consciousness unbidden. (Also let me be clear: the shameful act might be something really minor in the scheme of things, unremarkable human imperfection, but for some reason – say, a formative moment in childhood – it comes back to haunt.)
Anyway, on further thinking I realize that Trump’s incapability of shame (he’s a psychopath) makes his (and his followers’) inability to confront reality different from what I was thinking about, but not entirely different. Any psychologists/psychiatrists here who recognize anything in what I’m talking about?
My granddaughter is 8, in 3rd grade. This proud Nana says she’s very smart, very out-there and in-your-face, loves reading, excels in arithmetic (we’ll see about “real” math later!), loves music (but her other grandparents and I don’t think she’s got a future there as a performer) and is, most of all, an amazing artist for her age. Her last talent, visual art, won’t be apparent in what I’m about to post, which I share only because of the DEI element in it. Very amusing. (Over the last few months she’s taken to drawing figures, with their profiles, while she’s read to at bedtime. The gender categories used to be simply male and female. OMG, what is she being taught in school? Good stuff.
Will I live long enough to help guide her away from drugs, whatever (she’s 8 going on 14)? To see her (him, if she ends up that way – no signs yet) thrive?
I sincerely wish you and your family the best of luck. Being a life long bachelor with no offspring it’s hard to comprehend the latest generations. Be strong and be the best example that you can possibly be
These are your children, too. I don’t know how you might interact with children – maybe only as a voter for an increase in teachers’ pay, or whatever --, but these truly are your children, too. Wherever you live. Love them They are also your children.
Los Angeles was built in a unique semi-desert area. As a clean-slate metropolitan area in the 1920s, urban planners could, and did, take into account fire risk and water scarcity (dealt with largely by William Mullholland in the previous decade). Unfortunately, greed and population pressures got the better of us.
In the late 1920s, the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce commissioned two highly-regarded landscape architecture firms to create a vision for the region. Leaders became deeply concerned that traffic, air pollution, overpopulation and a lack of access to parks would harm the area’s future.
Two firms—Olmsted Brothers and Harland Bartholomew & Associates—crafted a prescient plan focused on addressing a scarcity of playgrounds and parks, as well as burgeoning traffic, air pollution and a population rapidly swelling to over two million.
Original Plan Graphic, Credit: Olmsted-Bartholomew Associates
The plan wasn’t adopted, and today these challenges have grown exponentially as the county’s population surges beyond 10 million and the natural landscape is dramatically altered to meet the needs of more residents.
Los Angeles County spans 4,000 square miles and is home to 88 cities and more than 10 million people. Instead of capitalizing on its unique assets of ethnic diversity and picturesque geography, though, the county is cut off from itself. Between mountains and forests to the north and east, and beaches to the west, infrastructure is grey, freeways are gridlocked and quality of life is uneven.
There’s no other place in the United States quite like it; Los Angeles County on its own would be the eighth most populous state in the U.S. and the 88th most populous country in the world. (from a 2014 article)
In the end, one city, Baldwin Park, which is east of Pasadena, was the sole adopter of the greenbelt plan. And that was scaled down to affect one 670-house development.
Two things frost my ass. Trump’s arrogant ‘I own Trump Inc but I’m not responsible for a single thing that happens there!’ and the way that Trump and his hand picked House members went after Hunter Biden for activities any other person would have rec’d a slap on the wrist for while proclaiming that HE was a victim of a witch hunt because anybody else wouldn’t have been charged! And the boys on the Supremes went right along with him.
She may well! Just today my daughter shared many more of these on the shared photo album devoted to the children. My granddaughter is creative about gender on most of them. There is a “she/her,” but most are things like a “she/they,” “they don’t care” – the list goes on. One character’s language is “Uzbeki” (should be Uzbek, I think.) Where did she pick up that that language exists? She’s not living in Brooklyn anymore!
I like this one (including the dress). Eighteen year-old Ruby is a “lawer-in-training,” and the phrase “loves Justiss” hovers near her shoulder. (My daughter is a lawyer.)
Interesting article on the history of LA, publicly available transportation, and the automobile. And the growth of LA. I appreciated this from Dorothy Parker (I’d only known before her description of Oakland):
…the City of Angels is known to outsiders and locals alike for its confusing mess of freeways and cars that crisscross the city — or perhaps as writer Dorothy Parker put it, crisscross the “72 suburbs in search of a city.”
So what? So the fuck what? Without punishment, this is meaningless. The fat asshole will not launch into grievance 2.0, have Merchan’s taxes audited down to the penny, have the DOJ write some bullshit memo that he wasn’t convicted, then launch into a campaign of lies claiming either it never happened or that he took that hit for his cult followers, who he will activate into violence on a whim and no one will be able to stop him. Stop think we won something here. We’re fucked folks and the sooner we figure that out, the better.
