Summer is Here...

...and it's particularly fun to spend it at Orange Grove Park.

a portion of the rainbow...

“The true harvest of my life is intangible - a little star dust caught, a portion of the rainbow I have clutched.”

--Henry David Thoreau

Ninja Playground

"Invincibility lies in the defence; the possibility of victory in the attack."

--Sun Tzu

Mystery Object

It's the first day of the month, and that means it's Theme Day for participating City Daily Photo bloggers. Today's theme is Mystery Object. Well, I hate to spoil everyone's fun but I know exactly what this thing is. At least, I have a few ideas... It's a robot stairclimber. A literal translation of cubism. An early, unsuccessful predecessor to the Rubix cube. It's an ironic take on square pegs and round holes. A National Endowment for the Arts grant winner. A temple for the worship of square dancing. Something left behind by someone who really thought outside the box. A fabulous use of unwanted apple crates. An alien DNA strand. Spare parts for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. A sign that the singularity will definitely happen sooner than we think... Or maybe not. Whatever it is, it can be found at Orange Grove playground. And as every parent knows, the way children transform from babies into big kids and beyond is definitely the biggest mystery of all. For other oddball sightings, take a look at my fellow City Daily Photo bloggers from around the globe. Click here to view thumbnails for all participants

All You Need

People have been particularly snarky and weird lately. Have you noticed?

We could all use a little more of this.

Update: For those of you who asked about it, my Patch column didn't post until 5:00PM yesterday. Find it -- my exploration of So Pas public art -- right here.

Caption this photo (#50)

Yeah. I need help with this one.

Caption this photo (#42)

Have at it, fine readers...

Caption this photo (#41)

Is it too soon for another Caption This Photo post? I hope not, because I love this shot but have absolutely nothing to say about it...

Good Sport

It would have been a better shot with a tripod, but I couldn't resist this spur-of-the-moment capture of my husband and daughter walking past Orange Grove Park. When the field and courts are lit up for games it feels like anything is possible ... like the unbridled enthusiasm of a sporting match floats up and wraps around everyone nearby. Maybe it's because my father was a coach, but the sound of cheering sports fans and (even screaming umpires) inspires me far more than most sermons or speeches. Like Knute Rockne said, "One man practicing sportsmanship is far better than a hundred teaching it."

Pole Position

Something strange has been going on at Orange Grove Park. First, this really ginormous pole went up. See how it dwarfs the light post? Then city workers dug, as my daughter pointed out, "the biggest hole in the whole wide world" in the field right underneath the pole. Next, they reinforced the hole with steel and turned it into some kind of hatch before covering it up again. (A hatch! Just like LOST! I knew South Pasadena was a portal to some otherworldly dimension ... and now I have proof!)

So, the other day this guy up there was tinkering with something at the top of the pole. I'm sure there is a perfectly reasonable cover story explanation. But if I were to guess? I'm betting on a strategic message broadcast to intelligent life forms across the galaxy. Or maybe it's a cloaking device, something to preserve South Pasadena's small-town vibe. Or a necessary prong, constructed to keep the universe from collapsing. And why not? After all, JPL is just a few miles away...

Girls of Summer

Crack! Such a hopeful sound bounced off the afternoon quiet. Almost simultaneously there was an expectant swell of cheers and a few happy cries of wooooohooooo! And then, as she raced around third base, a chorus of "Run, Lily, Run! Run, Lily, Run! Run, Lily, Run!"

And Lily ran. (All the way home.)

Settings: Part 10

Isn't this a great sign? I noticed it about a month ago when I walked across the baseball field at Orange Grove Park. Apparently the local Lucks are big supporters of South Pas little league. (Talk about a home field advantage!)

Which reminds me of one of my favorite games. Lets shake things up a bit this time: instead of a setting, if this were the TITLE of a movie, what would it be about? Go ahead, my ever-creative readers. Knock one out of the park...

The Good Life

The ancient Greeks called it Eudaimonia -- a melodic sounding, high-brow word that loosely translates to happiness, but that refers to an ideal existence where humanity is flourishing. Thriving. Living The Good Life. No matter how fortunate we are, we will always strive for the idea of something better.

Plato was convinced The Good Life could be found in walking a virtuous path, free of desires. Buddhists seem to share that line of reasoning. Thoreau insisted it was woven into the fabric of nature. Marx thought it could be found only after the end of capitalism. Milton Friedman believed it would happen at the hands of an ever-bountiful free market. Poets, musicians and artists have looked for it in any number sunsets and moonbeams -- and a few hookah pipes, wine glasses and pill bottles. The nightly news would have us believe that our economy -- sad, listless, terminal thing -- no longer offers any hope of The Good Life, that we are headed for another great Depression. (And that thought has given everybody great depression.)

Back in the late 80s, I worked for a writer who was born in 1900. She had been a struggling mother with a sick husband during most of the years of the Depression. I asked her once what it had been like to get through it. She laughed and said something like, "Well, we didn't sit around at the dinner table and talk about The Depression. We didn't even know that word. We just had fun and did the best we could. We got by during the bad times, and waited for the good times that eventually came." She was so optimistic, despite many devastating aspects of her life: losing a child to disease, losing a brother and a son in two different wars, losing a home during a hurricane, losing the sight in both eyes, losing her husband to Lou Gehrig's disease. But when I knew her, during the last of her many years, she always said, "This is the good life." And she was right.

I'm sure the little girl in this picture will look back on this time not as the year when the stock market fell apart and the sub prime mortgage crisis instigated a terrible economic downturn. Nope. I'm pretty sure remember it the year she was a princess at her birthday party. The one where she got the biggest pinata she'd ever seen, that spilled out more candy than she could eat.

Now that's The Good Life.

What generation gap?

A dark hoodie discretely stashing a bummed cigarette, a mumbled conversation, a pair of incredibly baggy pants... just this generation's coming-of-age accoutrement, no different (really) than the beeper an uncle might have slipped into one of his scuffy Doc Martins. Or a Sex Pistols T-shirt defiantly ripped and safety-pinned by a father. Or a grandmother's peace sign necklace and flag miniskirt. Or a great grandfather's coonskin cap. Yeah, there's that cell phone... but you just know those pleas and sighs could have just as easily been uttered into a crank phone mounted on a kitchen wall. Or written in a telegram. Or scribbled with a quill by candlelight.

Fashions change and technology buzzes forward but angst, irrepressible feelings of immortality and sulking ennui are exactly the same as they ever were. Isn't it grand? (Don't worry... it's only teenage wasteland.)

Settings: Part 8

It's that time again, all you wannabe Finchers, Howards, Van Sants, Daldrys and Boyles...

I have an excuse to trot out my favorite little game ... The Academy Awards are given out tonight just a few miles away at Hollywood's Kodak Theater. (Those who work in that area can take a look at Hollywood's street closures here.)

Residents of the greater Los Angeles area are connected to the big dream machine, whether or not we are employed by the entertainment industry. For the better part of a century, Los Angeles has been the nexus of entertainment, generating around $38 billion annually. That huge business of entertainment fuels many other businesses in the region -- from restaurants to payroll companies, temp agencies to set builders, animal trainers to day care providers. Cities themselves are involved in the manufacturing of entertainment, too. For those of us in the San Gabriel Valley, movie and TV crews are a way of life. (Readers of this blog might remember that my neighborhood provided background for an episode of Cold Case a few months ago.) The Changeling -- nominated for several Oscars this year -- filmed many scenes in neighboring Pasadena. Our historic neighborhoods provide the setting for many onscreen stories.

And speaking of onscreen stories... if this setting was a scene in a film, what would happen here?

Stars in the Dugout

The other day I took a walk around the baseball feild at Orange Grove Park right after the rain. I had just rounded the corner behind the third base foul line when the sun made a surprising blast from the outfield, across home plate and right into the stars painted on the dugout pavement.

Baseball is so elegant. Even when the park is empty.

Orange Park

This delightful little Mission District neighborhood park is called Orange Park because you'll find it on Orange Grove Avenue. (But the playground equipment makes sure it lives up to its colorful name.)