A DOG NAMED HONEY WEST

Beautiful weather here.  Early afternoon, dappled sun on our deck, I brought a book outside to read.  Since Honey West doesn't know how to read, she decided to nap.  When I caught her snoozing I couldn't resist taking out my phone...

Click.  She woke up... "Hey... I'm trying to sleep here."

GRIFFITH PARK BEAR - READY FOR ITS CLOSE-UP

We drove by the Griffith Park Bear yesterday morning at 8:15. The bear was already drawing a crowd!  And for good reason.  The bear was bedecked in finery - in honor of today's Oscar Award Ceremony.

About noon, when we passed by the bear again, I had to wait my turn to take a couple pics. 

With Oscar statue, blond wig and sunglasses this glamour puss seemed delighted to pose for the cameras. 

In the past the bear has been costumed for Valentine's Day or Halloween. On time during a cold winter day, the bear wore a knit scarf and cap.

Winter in Hollywood Today...

Low 40s this morning as we arrived at the Roosevelt Golf Course in Griffith Park. 
As I walked up the fairway on the 4th, the brilliant colors prompted me to pull my cell phone out of my golf bag for a pic. The tee shot of one of my golfing buddies ended up in a pile leaves (pretty but a tough lie).

It's a 9 hole course - and by the sixth I had to shed my outer fleece layer because of the bright sun. 
Tonight it's supposed to get down to 31 - very cold for Hollywood.

More about A CLOWN DOG'S CHRISTMAS

Well... It's already Dec. 11 and I'm in waiting mode.
The suspense is killing me... waiting on an e-mail from Amazon so I can ship some books to the local warehouse... and waiting also to hear when the e-book conversion is finished.  Remaining shopping days for Christmas 2012 are going fast.

Meanwhile I have printed books which I'll bring down the hill to a neighborhood coffee house this Sunday.  Sunday is Hollywood's Farmer's Market Day.  I'm hoping people who come to buy their fruit and veggies will also stop by to check out my book.  CAFFE ETC. (yes, double ffs).  is a great coffee place...Bill and I have lattes there every Sunday.  They have yummy breakfasts, too.  The owners Viviana and Brian have been so kind to let me put up a table to promote my book.

So while I'm waiting to hear WHEN the book will be available for order via the net,  I'll post some pics - the book's cover and the promo bookmark I created.

Ahh, the Lovely Jacaranda

We DO have seasons in Los Angeles and this is my favorite time of year, partly because of the glorious blooming jacarandas in my neighborhood. Here's Roosevelt golf course in Griffith Park. 

We're sharing the tee box of the Par 3 seventh hole with a jacaranda in full bloom.

Even the parking lot at Roosie becomes lovely when its jacarandas are blooming. Although you might prefer not to park beneath them when they shower down their deep purple petals...

 
 

About a Squirrel in Hollywood

Last spring I wrote about an orphaned owl we found near our house and brought to a wildlife rescue center.
It's only February but the wildlife around here has decided it's springtime again. One day I spotted a tubby squirrel hopping onto our deck. I'm guessing it was a "she" in nest-building mode.  I'd been wondering what bird or animal was unraveling my cotton rug.  It had been hanging on the deck rail to dry after a day of rain.

I made the rug for my dog but she never really liked it - Pebbles has an artistic sense - I think she objected to my sloppy crocheting - the rug, intended as the usual rectangle, turned out to be more of a trapezoid.  I haven't seen the squirrel for the past week.  I hope the ex-rug cotton makes a comfy nest for her kittens.

My hometowns - Silver Bay and Los Angeles

People here in LA often refer to it as a series of small towns.  My family often asks if  I live in Hollywood or Los Angeles. Hollywood is not a city of its own but part of Los Angeles.  If you know Silver Bay you  might not think that these two "towns" have anything in common.  Au contraire.  When I moved to Silver Bay in 1956, all my friends came from somewhere else.  Silver Bay didn't exist until 1955 or 1956 (I have research in a file somewhere which gives the exact date).  And in Los Angeles - nearly everyone comes here from somewhere else, too.  It's an old joke - if you've lived here a year, you're a native.  So maybe that's why Los Angeles seemed familiar to me when I moved here.

Do You Know the Way?

1987. Hollywood, California

Walking on a street in our new neighborhood I heard a car behind me. The streets in the hillside area where I live are narrow, with no sidewalks and, sometimes, no curbs and gutters. I tucked myself closer to the edge of the road to allow ample room for the vehicle to pass. The sedan slowed, then stopped beside me; the woman in the front passenger seat lowered her window. “Can you tell me where I can find the Hollywood sign?” she asked.

It was early morning and unusually clear. In 1976, when I moved to Los Angeles, the frequently cloudy mornings surprised me. The sunny California that I had expected often didn’t arrive until after eleven. Sometimes my husband and I carried umbrellas with us. After a few weeks, however, we began to trust that the clouds and fog, what the TV weather people called the marine layer, would dissipate and that, eventually, the sun would shine.

“It’s behind you,” I said. With a sweep of my hand I pointed to the famous white letters, high on a hillside, beyond the car’s rear window, that spelled out Hollywood.

The lady turned her head and craned her neck. “There it is, Hon,” she said to the man behind the wheel.

He leaned across the woman towards me. “How do we get up there?”

I hesitated. Although people had in the past (one time, just before Easter, someone had climbed up and covered an “L” so that the sign said HOLYWOOD), I didn’t think you could get up to the sign anymore. Even if you could still get up to the sign, I didn’t think you were supposed to. I didn’t want to encourage these tourists in any illegal venture. Their out-of- state license plate indicated they were from West Virginia. Wasn’t that one of those tobacco states? They were probably heavy smokers. Smoking was banned in the hillside areas because of the fire danger. Maybe I’d send them up near the sign, they’d light up and I’d be responsible for the destruction of a neighborhood.

“I don’t know if you can actually get up there,” I told them. “But if you turn around, you can get up to the Hollywood reservoir. That’s a good place to take a picture of the sign. And across the lake you can see a house that someone told me Madonna owns. But I don’t know if she’s there very often.”

We were only a half-mile away from the reservoir, but the streets wind this way and that way and the street signs are often obscured by palm fronds and bougainvillea. If they were lucky they found someone else to direct them to the reservoir. New to the area, unsure of the street names, I may have given them directions with one too many left turns. Fussing about my poor navigational help, I walked home. Suddenly an eerie feeling percolated within me. Being asking for directions… it was déjà vu...

1964. Silver Bay, Minnesota

Riding my blue Huffy bicycle along Banks Boulevard on a warm summer afternoon, about halfway home, I stopped. I had been at band and orchestra rehearsals at Kelley High School, and my violin and clarinet each dangled from a handle bar. I was at the point where the boulevard began a steep, downhill grade. You could pick up considerable speed on descent which was why Silver Bay’s local Soap Box Derby competition used this section of Banks as its race course. I still had scabs on my knees from an earlier incident when I had skidded on the gravel near this same spot. The violin, being longer and heavier than the clarinet, had unbalanced me. Unable to regain equilibrium, the bike had crashed and pavement had peeled layers of skin from one elbow and one knee. As I readjusted my cases, I heard a vehicle behind me. I turned as the station wagon slowed and rolled to a stop beside me. The woman in the passenger seat rolled down her window.

“Can you tell me where we can find the business district?” she asked.

I hesitated.

“We saw a sign… business district ahead…”

I knew the sign on Outer Drive. It wasn’t far from the junction with Highway 61. Driving into town they had actually seen the shopping area they were searching for, but gone on by. Eventually, on their way back towards the highway, they had spotted a twelve-year-old girl on a blue bike and asked her for directions.

“This is it,” I said, sweeping my hand toward the nearby parking lot and shopping center below us. It was a gesture stolen from Dinah Shore when, on her weekly TV show, she presented the features of the latest models from Chevrolet. The Silver Bay Bank was just down the hill which anyone who has been on Banks above the shopping center in Silver Bay will tell you.

The woman looked disappointed. The man in the driver’s seat leaned across his wife, craning his neck to see what he could see. He shook his head. Maybe he felt snookered for turning off Highway 61 and driving into the City of Silver Bay. As the station wagon sped away, without turning toward our Shopping Center, I tweaked the positions of my violin and clarinets cases for balance, and then coasted down Banks Boulevard toward home.