Griffith Park, Interrupted

The rain, one day’s worth on Monday, made LA a little more beautiful. Within a few minutes I took both pictures. The first is fog shrouding the top of Griffith Park, making it look like some exotic European country. You can’t even see the ugly ugly hillsides, the same soylent green that they’ve been for over a year and a half now.

(The idea was to stop non-native weeds from growing - they sprayed gunk on with helicopters. Okay, good intention, but it only works if we get rid of all the bad non-native plants already in the park. Any progress report on that, people? In our meetings, I was told it was by volunteers. All 800 acres. Sure would like to know how that is going, and more, how to get rid of this crappy green that isn’t helping anything.)

Broody, moody clouds over Griffith Park hills.

The bottom photo is a rainbow I spotted 5 minutes later! For some inexplicable reason, it bypassed the Americana in Glendale, just behind it - perhaps feeling it’s as boring as I do - and went straight to a modest house in Atwater. (I’m only guessing - perhaps there are riches within.)

These are on top of my great excitement to spot two shooting stars over Silver Lake late Saturday night! I couldn’t find any information about it at Griffith Observatory… and why, may I ask? Why does our huge observatory not have celestial events listed? So I called them, and the operator looked it up in Google, instead.

Space.com explains:

This week brings us what usually is considered to be the most satisfying of all the annual meteor displays, even surpassing the famous Perseids of August: the December Geminid Meteor Shower. 

And Moxie saw them in Hollywood, too!

Rainbows and puppies enter Atwater.

I hate the annual Christmas Light Festival in Griffith Park. The idea that the cash-poor city of Los Angeles decides that wasting tons of electricity is the best way to celebrate Christmas is almost as obnoxious as the truly knockout fumes from the cars if you get stuck in traffic there. Or the traffic snarls for hours on the 5 going South, as the lineup of cars snakes out of the park every night. For many years I’ve had to avoid going anywhere in the valley for 6 weeks a year, as the traffic jam coming home, sometimes for miles, just isn’t worth it.

Here’s a link to the DWP site, with all the info: http://www.DWPlightfestival.com/.   Here’s a  PR review of the light festival by LA Splash, which I never heard of before:

If you want to drive, load up with hot cocoa, or spirits for the adults not driving, and patience for the follies of others.  Play some holiday songs you can sing along to. There is music along the Festival mile, but the wait coming up Crystal Springs Road from Los Feliz can be as much as a couple of hours…

The surreal stroll with blinking and animated light displays made us giddy and we laughed and sang like silly kids as we pointed and marveled.  

Another great photo by Tambako the Jaguar! From Creative Commons. No, not from Griffith Park.

I didn’t feel at all giddy. I was scared. I was supposed to meet my friend for dinner in Toluca Lake on Nov 24, and I decided to take a nice drive through the park, and follow Forest Lawn Drive, rather than take the 5. Note that this is 3 days before Thanksgiving. There’s not supposed to be any light festival before Thanksgiving, let alone Christmas! I didn’t see any blinking sign in front, because there wasn’t any.   Keep Reading »

I always look forward to major holidays in Los Angeles because it gets quiet! Even the freeways. All the roads. The quietest time of any week is Sunday evening, but holidays are blanketed as if we had the snow we never get.

Yesterday, Thanksgiving, was that quiet. So quiet, that some of the wildlife got overexcited. Did those people LEAVE finally? It was only 6 PM, just an hour after sunset, when I heard two Great Horned Owls singing a duet outside my window!

This is NOT a great horned owl! It’s a Snowy Owl from Zurich, from Tambako the Jaguar. He’s at Flickr, and this is from Creative Commons. This is the BEST place to get photos by permission, instead of using Google images, which STEALS images all the time.

If you hear an owl anywhere in northeast LA, there’s a 99% chance it’s a Great Horned Owl. You probably won’t be able to see it, but the call is distinctive - WHO (pause) who who - so that once you’ve heard it you’ll remember it. The rhythm is compelling, and I feel that before the sound, like a jungle drum beating in Silver Lake.

When I lived on Vermont, just a block down from Griffith Park, I heard them all the time. In Silver Lake, a mile away, not so much, but a few times a year. So it was funny to hear them on Thanksgiving so early!

Of course then a rowdy family, 20 or 30 people, came down the street and they were gone. But later on, I heard them (the owls, not the people) near the 7-11 on Hyperion. They were having a great time, exploring new places in the hood.

In other bird news   Keep Reading »

Start the month off with a festive meeting! In case you wondered what these Griffith Park meetings are like, here’s your chance to see. These meetings are always open to the public, and new people are warmly welcome. I don’t think food has ever been offered before, so take advantage and come on by! Fun walk afterwards looking at the DWP lights the way they can best be seen - on foot.

PROS MEETING AGENDA DECEMBER 1, 2008
Griffith Park Ranger Station Meeting Room, 4730 Crystal Springs Drive Griffith Park

Holiday Fare and Beverages available at 6:45
Meeting Agenda starts promptly at 7 p.m.

followed by an 8 o’clock Winter Walk through the DWP Festival of Lights in Griffith Park

 1.  Call to order and introductions.

 2.  Forest Lawn EIR Scoping Meeting — Report on November 19^th City of Los Angeles Draft EIR Public Scoping Meeting for Forest Lawn’s 40-year Master Plan to develop the balance of its undeveloped site as cemetary property. Much of this land is currently naturally forested and abuts Griffith Park. (10 min)

 3.  Griffith Park Landmark Update – Report on October 31, 2008 Cultural Heritage Commission Meeting and steps we can take during City Council phase to help the family of Colonel Griffith have Griffith Park designated an L.A. Historic Cultural Monument. Discussion & possible action. (20 min)

 4.  L.A. Zoo Elephants – Overview of sanctuary vs. exhibit controversy currently at City Council and its potential impact on Griffith Park. Discussion & possible action. (15 min)

 5.  OLD BUSINESS (10 minutes)

                  a. Screen Actors Guild Plaque at Mineral Wells – Bernadette Soter

                  b. Greek Theater Vermont Canyon Recreational Access Issues – Lucinda Phillips

 6.  Committee and public comment on non-agenda items (10 min)

 And then…Griffith Park DWP Festival of Lights Walk!

And neither you nor your family will get bupkis. Case in point: the Interstate 5 pileup in a tunnel near Santa Clarita in October 2007, which killed 3 people and 33 trucks and a car. (33 trucks in a row? Remind me never to drive there.) The crashes turned the nearby tunnel into a fiery inferno, melting cars and people. (another reference to hell in SoCal.) Fatalities included a little boy who was burned alive in his father’s truck.

The I-5 tunnel fire that killed 3 and burnt 34 trucks may not even have happened! Photo by AP, via Popular Photography.

The Times article says:

CHP investigators determined that Jose Reyes, 29, was driving at least 65 mph along the rain-slicked freeway when his truck veered left and crashed into a concrete median wall after driving through the tunnel, according to the prosecutor’s memo obtained by The Times…

Reyes’ crash set off chain-reaction collisions behind him that killed a 6-year-old boy and two adults, and injured 10 others…

But as traffic slowed, other trucks collided near the tunnel exit, leading to the fatal accidents about four to five minutes after Reyes’ crash. Flames shot through the 550-foot tunnel, trapping motorists and melting vehicles as temperatures inside soared to about 1,500 degrees.

A spokeswoman for Georgia-based  Saia Motor Freight Line Inc., issued a statement Tuesday saying that the company’s vehicle had been regularly maintained and met state and federal safety requirements. The fatalities in the tunnel, she said, were unrelated to Reyes’ accident.

The company went on to say that there really was no tunnel, it was just a big barbeque pit, and the driver, Reyes, enjoyed a fine cup of coffee afterwards, on their dime.

Popular Mechanics analyzed the crash last winter, before the facts were in.  They said the tunnel is dangerous on its own. (although there was no previous history of accidents, from what I could find. And, of course, Reyes was on the other side of the tunnel when he jackknifed, so, not.) They also gave the info that it happened at 10 PM. Drink and drive? Who knows, no one was tested in the emergency. But, yeah.

Los Angeles County Deputy Dist. Atty. Courtney Armendariz wrote up the investigation and report. Courtney seems to be a very intuitive attorney: she argued both sides of the case, just guessing what Reyes and Saia would say in court,  without, actually, you know, going to court.   Keep Reading »

I’m starting a new category here, From Beyond the Grave. Who isn’t fascinated with death? And who will speak for those who have departed untimely? I am, and I will.

I spotted this  item in the LA Times first, but instablogs has more details.  Simon Rios is was an illegal who killed his wife with a pipe and strangled his 3 daughters. A week earlier he had raped and killed a neighbor girl:

An illegal immigrant serving five life terms for the strangling deaths of his wife, three young daughters and a neighborhood girl apparently took his own life Thursday by hanging himself, authorities said.

Simon Rios, 36, was found in his cell at the Pendleton Correctional Facility northeast of Indianapolis after noon Thursday, prison spokesman David Barr said. Rios was pronounced dead about 40 minutes later after guards and medical personnel couldn’t revive him.

There were no signs of foul play, Barr said…

Here’s the part that proves selfish, nationalistic urges never end:

Rios’ attorney, Michelle Kraus, said he left a note requesting that his remains be returned to his native Mexico.

Oh, okay, will do!  Only, I wish you had done us all a favor, and walked back there on your own two feet before things, shall we say, got out of hand.

“I’m very sad. I know he did a very evil thing, and he always knew he did a very evil thing,” Kraus said.

Hey, you and me both, Michelle. Can you hear me crying?

More details and facts about his defense here.

Simon Rios, the one in the orange stripes. Maybe they should be yellow. Photo from fortwayne.com.