Notes of a Native Daughter
Join author Susan Straight and photographer Douglas McCulloh on their journeys in Southern California's Inland Empire.
Notes of a Native Daughter:
I teach in an area almost written off by affluent America, in a university where "minority" students have been the majority for years. I teach students who lately inspire resentment among Californians who begrudge tax dollars.
Notes of a Native Daughter:
I thought my job was to make them write about stucco and wood framing, about gated communities and urban apartment complexes, about bedrooms decorated with designer furniture, and kitchens where twelve people sat around one table. You can be...
Notes of a Native Daughter:
I've come to realize that so many classic cars and trucks are like emblems of American history, but the Apache truly gets a particular kind of sentimental, historic, and intense love from people of all races, backgrounds, and regions.
Notes of a Native Daughter:
People who still make something we can drive, like the Jimenez Bros, are artisans putting another coat of primer and then custom flames or candyflake on better dreams.
Notes of a Native Daughter:
Pinstripes and swirls. Nine-foot flames lifting from custom hoods. The percussive revving of engines. Custom upholstery, gleaming chrome and candyflake paint. It must be spring, and time for one of the best parts of being a Southern Californian -- car shows!
Notes of a Native Daughter:
I went to visit my rock last week. I hadn't actually touched it since I was about five, though I salute it every time on that freeway, and the other rock's celebrity journey had me staring at the hundreds of other huge obelisks of stone where we grew up.
Notes of a Native Daughter:
Doug's photos and my essays have been some of the most transformative fun I've ever had. Now our work for KCET is on display at Venice Arts -- Doug's photos, and my stories.
Notes of a Native Daughter:
Here in Southern California, especially in the old citrus-growing regions, the first week of April is a picture-postcard replica of most lyrics in "America the Beautiful."
Notes of a Native Daughter:
Something many Americans believe about Southern California is that people here came from somewhere else. In Riverside, every day I see people I've known since kindergarten, and every time I go to a North High game, it's like a family reunion.
Notes of a Native Daughter:
None of this would be in this long desert valley without two essentials brought from other places years ago, or months ago, or yesterday: water and workers.
Notes of a Native Daughter:
Imagine it is late August, and 120 degrees, and you have to climb the hundred feet of ladder to cut each heavy bunch of dates with a knife fashioned out of steel and lower the bunch on a hook to a man waiting at the bottom. Now imagine that you have to climb the ladder a hundred times.
Notes of a Native Daughter:
County Fairs in America usually make people think of late summer or early fall -- harvest of corn or apples, prize pigs like Wilbur in "Charlotte's Web" along with horses, cows, and chickens on display. Who would expect a county fair in February?
Notes of a Native Daughter:
Coming out of the Ontario Airport, travelers can see just beyond the railroad tracks a vast stone building with arched windows and the skeletal remains of a wooden roof. Nearby are smaller buildings wrapped incongruously in shiny white plastic,...
Notes of a Native Daughter:
It can be historic, as it remains the nation's first-ever master-planned retirement community where seniors could buy their own plot of land, move onto it a single or double-wide mobile home, and run this world.
Notes of a Native Daughter:
The nighttime security officer arrives when the sun sets and the Santa Ana River is lit by floodlights at the construction site. Here in March of 1774, a party formed by Juan Bautista de Anza to form a trading route in New California crossed the river for the first time.
Notes of a Native Daughter:
A lovely irony that many of us here in Southern California might have forgotten - the California Dream, the envy of the rest of the nation with our endless run and outdoor living, requires shade.
Notes of a Native Daughter:
I went to my grandmother's house in the San Jacinto Valley last week, praying that there would be sheep because I have missed them.
Notes of a Native Daughter:
Listen to the names of what we have here and think of the beauty of what people might think of as weeds, often overlooked.
Notes of a Native Daughter:
Katherine Siva Saubel, a Cahuilla elder stateswoman, was legendary in this part of Inland Southern California.
Notes of a Native Daughter:
I like to look around at Andulka for the classic American landscape.
SoCal Focus is a daily blog about the people, places and issues in and around Southern California.
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