D. J. Waldie
About Me:
D. J. Waldie is the author of "Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir" and "Where We Are Now: Notes from Los Angeles." He is a contributing editor for the Los Angeles Times.
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My KCET.org Activities
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The friendly docent who chatted with me seemed a little dazed at what it will require to take the Crystal Cathedral and turn it into a Catholic church.
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Southern California is being refigured by the imaginations of all of its interpreters. "Ghost" inhabitants are making their historical claims. Shadows are being illuminated by a new generation of authors, academics, and cultural critics.
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Shelter took on a new meaning under the threat of global thermonuclear war. Decades of uneasy peace have followed. "Shelterists" are sure that it won't last.
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Remaking the Los Angeles landscape balances risks and benefits. That balance has been part of the Los Angeles River revitalization plan. Can it be achieved for the Long Beach breakwater?
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Stone and glass. Anchored and slipping away. Wayfaring and rest, on a Palos Verdes bluff.
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The click-click-click-click of a sprinkler on the hottest morning of summer tolls passages into September.
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I'm not - to myself - an authentic Angeleño. But my status as a tourist in the country of wheels does allow me to be dispassionate about those who are drivers.
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The investigation is widening to include grand jury testimony by several state legislators. More records of contractors have been subpoenaed. Behind the corruption probe are the ties between small time politicians and big city political operatives.
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The makers of California's disastrous electrical deregulation scheme were convinced that the market they constructed was infallible. That corrupting belief led them blindly into the hands of market manipulators.
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Termed-out state legislators fill city council seats that would have been filled in the past by crusaders, activists, and community organizers. Conflict is muted in a body that has begun to look like an adjunct to Sacramento. And that's not a good thing.
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"All the world's a stage" was a cliché well before the glum Jacques, in "As You Like It," trots out his set speech on the Seven Ages of Man. For Shakespeare, however much "stage" and "world" were interchangeable, both were in a place he never entirely left.
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The files of "days" and "weeks" proclaimed serve to measure the past's fears and hopes, stereotypes and traditions, the bureaucratic and the tragic.
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"Ever" and "never" continue redrawing a presumed paradise on the city's body, never and ever meeting the demands of our desire.
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America's streets bristle with public conversations that aren't necessarily for you or me. Should city councils care?
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The world I know seemed to have fallen still.
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Science proves that Angeleños are slackers, easily distracted, and barely rational. But that's okay, because it's not our fault. The problem is our climate.
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The homely sugar beet begat development in both Los Angeles and Orange counties at the turn of the 20th century. The city of Los Alamitos began with sugar, but celebrating the beet isn't entirely sweet.
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Posted An Empire of Ice Cream: Long Beach Is the Frozen Confectionery Capitol of America
in SoCal FocusLong Beach tops the nation in spending on ice cream according to some statistics. Meanwhile, city council members plan to silence the annoying tunes of the vendors who sell frozen treats. -
At the Vineyard junction between Venice and downtown in 1913, a Pacific Electric trolley slammed into two stalled trains. For one survivor, "The sights we saw ... were sickening and horrible."
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Posted Becoming Los Angeles: My Speech at the Natural History Museum's Exhibit Opening
in SoCal FocusThe new permanent exhibition "Becoming Los Angeles" opens on Sunday at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County in Exposition Park. I had a small part in the press preview on Wednesday and got to say a few words about what "becoming" might mean to Angeleños. -
L.A. was a center of suburban farming from the turn of the century to the late 1940s. Chickens and rabbits, corn and rhubarb, beans and tomatoes once flourished on the doorsteps of working-class Angeleños.
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Los Angeles defies easy definition, although we try. When we talk about the city, familiar dystopian and utopian images crowd into the conversation. When we talk about Los Angeles, should we be talking about something else?
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On a patch of gravel and dirt the color of the full moon, shorebirds, crows, and a "native" meet ambiguously.
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According to Rick Cole, "Simply speeding up the dysfunctional (development approval) process is clearly not the solution." And Ron Kaye says the result will be "a revolutionary change that allows every project to be put up for sale to fund political corruption."
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My neighbor's Chinese elm endured multiple assaults, ever returning to droop over the sidewalk as shade, annoyance, and a reminder of durability ... until it was gone.
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CEQA - the state's increasingly beleaguered environmental review process - empowers neighborhood residents to question development plans. Will a question of parking put new teeth in the law at the expense of streamlining the process?
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Murkier and murkier grow the politics of the Central Basin Municipal Water District.
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Father and son look for connections -- familial and civic -- in Los Angeles. They depend on a shared "moral imagination" that helps them fill the gaps.
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The crosswalk button is a placebo, a signal to higher (computer) powers, and possibly a device with magical properties. It all depends on whether you push or not and where and when.
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1849 taught California a harsh lesson about the permanent costs of a boom-and-bust culture. Governor Brown seems to have forgotten what the Gold Rush gave us.
Recent Actions from D. J. Waldie
No recommendations yet.
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The friendly docent who chatted with me seemed a little dazed at what it will require to take the Crystal Cathedral and turn it into a Catholic church.
-
Southern California is being refigured by the imaginations of all of its interpreters. "Ghost" inhabitants are making their historical claims. Shadows are being illuminated by a new generation of authors, academics, and cultural critics.
-
Shelter took on a new meaning under the threat of global thermonuclear war. Decades of uneasy peace have followed. "Shelterists" are sure that it won't last.
-
Remaking the Los Angeles landscape balances risks and benefits. That balance has been part of the Los Angeles River revitalization plan. Can it be achieved for the Long Beach breakwater?
-
Stone and glass. Anchored and slipping away. Wayfaring and rest, on a Palos Verdes bluff.
-
The click-click-click-click of a sprinkler on the hottest morning of summer tolls passages into September.
-
I'm not - to myself - an authentic Angeleño. But my status as a tourist in the country of wheels does allow me to be dispassionate about those who are drivers.
-
The investigation is widening to include grand jury testimony by several state legislators. More records of contractors have been subpoenaed. Behind the corruption probe are the ties between small time politicians and big city political operatives.
-
The makers of California's disastrous electrical deregulation scheme were convinced that the market they constructed was infallible. That corrupting belief led them blindly into the hands of market manipulators.
-
Termed-out state legislators fill city council seats that would have been filled in the past by crusaders, activists, and community organizers. Conflict is muted in a body that has begun to look like an adjunct to Sacramento. And that's not a good thing.
