The Mobile Homeless

Maybe a year ago I saw a documentary about the mobile homeless, people who live out of their cars. There was a father with three kids in an RV, a middle aged woman in VW minibus, a woman who lost her job and home due to a car accident and mounting medical bills. It was scary. They were not like the usual homeless we see on the streets, they looked "normal," they had or used to have jobs, but life took a wrong turn somewhere. It reminded me how easy it is to fall through the cracks.

Due to the worsening economy the number of mobile homeless is growing. I was trying to find that documentary on the web, but instead I found a more recent ABC News item about the growing number of mobile homeless in Santa Barbara. Here is the transcript and the video.

I see the campers, vans, RVs, everywhere in the Valley, trying to be inconspicuous on the dingier side streets, semi-industrial areas, mostly staying out of the residential areas, but not too far from them. The area between Vineland and Lankershim where Phil's Diner once resided used to be one of those areas, but all the condo and commercial developments keep pushing them out.

I also found a BBC News video of tent cities. Grapes of Wrath, anyone?

Thanksgiving Duck

I made duck yesterday. I followed Sarah Moulton's recipe for "Best Roast Duck." I must admit it came out very tender and juicy.

I also made Sweet Potato Pie (Emeril recipe) for the first time ever. It tastes just like pumpkin pie, but far easier to make from fresh ingredients. I'm smitten with sweet potatoes, these humble but tasty tubers. It's another food source that was woefully absent from my childhood.

Check out that chunk of vitamin on that roast!

Excuse me while I dig in. Pass the tapeworms, please.

Approved by the American Meat Institute

Karin has gone on a binge of advertising follies. I just had to pitch in.

Rogue Ducks

I spent the entire Saturday in Disneyland. At the Happiest Place On Earth everything carefully orchestrated and controlled. Except the ducks. It seems these enterprising avian squatters simply just moved in. Mostly they hang around "The Rivers of America," feeding on Cheetos, but I saw a couple of them waddle around Walt's statue then perform what seemed to be the re-enactment of Pearl Harbor, heading in the direction of Snow White's Castle.

I'm pretty sure they are not official Disney Ducks, because if they were, they would be wearing name tags. This one was blissfully sleeping on a rock next to a "raging hippo" in the Jungle Cruise ride. I didn't have my real camera with me, just a crappy point-and-shoot Lumix. Half my pictures came out blurry or oddly focused. I like this one blurry. It's an abstract with a hint of duck.

Zen (?) Friday

Sorry Petrea. I'm feeling fuzzily disjointed today. I set out to find the perfect corn bread recipe, but failed. Heading in I knew nothing of corn bread. I learned that there are distinct Southern and Northern varieties. But which one should I side with? I had corn bread two or three times maybe and didn't even like it much, but maybe they were not good ones. Would I even recognize a good one?

Even the concept of corn bread was unknown to me when I was growing up in Hungary. Why is it? We had corn. Though it mostly served as chicken feed. Eggs of corn-fed chickens have deep yellow, almost orange yolks. We also cooked corn in water, with the husk, simmering it over low heat for an hour or so. Yumm.

My father was a writer, but at one point he gave up city life, moved to the country and took up raising chickens. That's how I learned how to put a chicken into a catatonic daze without hurting it. You pick up the chicken, tuck its head under its wing, then you swing it gently sideways a few times, back and forth. When you put it down it will just stay there motionless. To wake it up you just give it a little shove.

In Missouri I learned to wrap up corn in foil and bake it in the oven like baked potatoes. Apparently it's a Midwest thing - like fried (pig) brain sandwiches.

How does it happen? How come one culture looks at corn and decides to grind it up and feed it to chickens, another decides to grind it up and bake with it?

PS. Don't get me started on peanut butter.

Little Green House

I went out photographing, just within walking distance on Sunday morning. I've noticed this cute little green house years ago. Earlier this summer it was up for sale, for too much, not that it mattered. Now it's standing empty. Out of curiosity I looked it up on Redfin and PropertyShark.

It's 1,033 sqft, sitting on a 5,804 sqft lot. It sold in 1989 for $220,000 and again in 2001 for the exact same amount. Then in 2006 it sold for $540,000. It seems to have foreclosed in August this year. It confounds me that people honestly found nothing unusual about the value of a house in a not so special neighborhood going up 245% in five short years.



Across the street used to be a yellow house, but it's gone now, replaced by an apartment building of nondescript color. I took a few pictures before it was gone, but my best shot was not of the house but the backyard.

For Frank

Then.


Now.

The Unknown Newlyweds

This is the largest of all my found photos, roughly 17.5x22.5 inches with frame. There is a story how I came in possession of it. Back in my college days in Indiana I had a summer job working with a grass-roots type of organization, utility watch dog, all that. It was going door-to-door daily. I got in quite a good shape thanks to all the walking, and got soaked by summer showers more than once.

At one evening, at the end of my route I knocked on the door of an older couple and they invited me in. Just to make small conversation I remarked on the carved wooden figures over the fireplace. The woman said she picked them up at a yard sale. I replied that I liked yard sales too, though I was collecting old photographs. She looked at me, told me to to hold on, and left the room. She came back with the big wedding picture.

It originally belonged to an elderly neighbor - it was her wedding. The man in the picture, her husband has passed away. When this old neighbor, the bride, passed away too the heirs didn't want the picture, so the neighbor I was talking to took it. However she didn't know what to do with it either, so just kept it in the basement. She was happy to give it to me, seemed relieved. So the picture now hangs in my living room.

Duck, Duck... Turtle?

November 13, Thursday is the big California earthquake preparedness day. They call it Shake Out. At 10 am we are all supposed to duck and cover. Bert over here is from those other duck-and-cover days.

Square America: Wonder Girl

After ten days I have internet again. Jose the Technician was very helpful and knowledgable. It turns out that my dedicated dsl line was disconnected at the phone box. By whom and why remains a mystery. He also told me that he never before saw a dedicated line by Earthlink.

I wonder what that W stands for. It makes me think of Wonder Woman. Having grown up on the wrong side of the ocean/iron curtain/cold war I was not exposed to this bedrock piece of Americana at the time. I later got to know about only through still images and text. Some months ago at the insistance of a friend I got to watch the pilot episode. It was a hoot! I had no idea it was so tongue and cheek.

The Seven Dwarves live in Burbank

I have proof:


I have seen a few unusual houses in The Valley, but this is by far the kookiest. I found it by chance, zigzagging around small streets by Chandler blvd. I drove by a few weeks ago and there were sunflowers growing all over the front yard. Unfortunately I didn't take a picture.

One Fish, Two Fish...

I still don't have internet at home. After six days of twice daily discussions with Earthlink tech support they finally came to the conclusion that something is indeed wrong and they need to send out someone. I figured that out by Sunday afternoon. My favorite part is that every time I call in we start over from zero, as I'm being told to reboot the modem. Good times.

What does it have to do with fish? Absolutely nothing.


I've picked up these funny fishing photos over the years. I like the way the photographer is so focused on the fish that the he crops the persons head off. I had professor in St. Louis who used to photograph that way, but intentionally. He would stop people on the street, on the beach and asked if he could take their picture, but he shot them the neck down. I think he was really onto something. The pictures were actually more interesting without the distraction of faces.

Damn Right!

One less thing for me to be anxious about.

Grave Signs

I've been without internet since the start of the weekend. I have no idea why, since Earthlink's tech support is as useful as suntan lotion in a snowstorm. So I went out and took some pictures between rain showers.

I was first nonplussed till I figured out that "grave marker" is just the pastel term for tombstone. I think if the sign said "tombstones" I would find it less surreal. The house sits in burbank on the corner where Victory and Burbank Boulvards meet, across from Costco.

It inspired me to write a little poem, something a rarely do, since it's not my strength.

Let us mark your grave,
And the time you'll take
To get there.