Wheel in the Sky

Sometimes it's hard to predict what will trigger the high pitched squeal of a pig about to have its neck sliced open coming from the throat of a six year old girl. Of course its always an accumulation: a long day in the car without a proper nap, a tummy ache from too much pop and cookies, can't find Barbie's purple princess dress... but the breakdown came when once again her pesky 3 year old sister and brother showed wills of their own.

The perfect gift, I thought. The well-meaning uncle always wants to give something good for them. A wooden train would be something I could give all three. It would encourage cooperative creativity, requiring them to share and kill the "that's my toy" demon.

At first they are all very excited, but then the building begins. The great thing about this set is its ease of assembly. The track pieces can be fit together in any direction, up or down. This means it can be shaped in many ways, so the twins begin snapping pieces together randomly and setting out the little buildings and railroad workers.
"Stop!"
"What's wrong?"
"We have to make it like on the box!"
"But look, it works this way too." I push the little train along the parts of track already assembled.
"Nooo! I want to make it like the box!"

And there it is. The avalanche begins. She starts kicking apart the little scene the twins had assembled. The rhythm of the three high pitched cries remind me of the legendary 1980s punk band Flipper. "Sex Bomb Baby Yeah!"

Our mayor is a bit like the well meaning uncle, believing he has the perfect gift in the form of a Wilshire Ave subway to the sea. He is even more like my niece, dreaming of how perfect the train looks like on the box, not wanting to start building anything else that might work--like bus only lanes--because it doesn't match his rail set in the sky.

Meanwhile us riders on the ground wallow in dawdling. Like the other evening, it took me nearly 45 minutes to go 2 miles south from Hollywood to Beverly. Dear dreamer, this isn't some obscure corner in the middle of the Valley. This is Hollywood and Highland--the closest L.A. has to a Times Square!

Once again only Journey will suffice:
Ive been trying to make it home
Got to make it before too long
I cant take this very much longer
Im stranded in the sleet and rain
Dont think Im ever gonna make it home again
The mornin sun is risin
Its kissing the day

Wheel in the sky keeps on turnin
I dont know where Ill be tomorrow
Wheel in the sky keeps on turnin

And that is my Holiday Gift to you--The Mad Bus Rider will be on Vacation for the next two weeks.
Happy New Year!

Paradise Now

Easily the most popular destination in the Valley and one of the most popular in all of L.A. is Universal City. From my first trip to California in '76 I still remember the mechanical shark attacking our tram and thinking, even as an eleven-year-old, how fake Jaws looked up close. More frightening was the hyper-real avalanche of five foot high stones that "accidentally" fell when an earthquake struck--the hills really shook!--until they bounced silently on the road and I realized they were foam.

That night I'm not sure where Dad parked the '67 Winnebago trailer and golden brown Dodge Van we packed with ten kids, but a five mile venture to the northeast on the Hollywood freeway would have encountered what made the Valley a Shangri La for the workaday Joe not part of the entertainment world.

In the 1970s Panorama City was still the booming Levittown of the West, with the San Gabriel Mountains as majestic backdrop, set on curving streets, glorious 3 bedroom tract homes, astro turf perfect front lawns, and American built cars in every driveway--perhaps even my Presbyterian Minister Grandfather's standard: the Impala, built just down the street at the GM plant adjacent the Southern Pacific tracks that border Van Nuys to the south.The plant closed in 1992 and six years later a shopping mall emerged on its site calling itself "The Plant". One supposes the name is meant to evoke images of old time industry much like Cannery Row in Monterey or Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco remade former warehouses and factories into popular tourist shopping districts. But whereas one could call these places classic simulations-- reconstructing the past minus its drudgery, pain and class conflict--"The Plant" reconstructs nothing but another hideous big-box mall.Based on appearance, "The Plant" might refer to the Palm Tree that sprouts up randomly amid a sea of parking spaces. Yet across the street is the anti-simulation: an abandoned ten acre facility reminds visitors of the 5000 lost jobs and the general deindustrialization that cracked and crumbled the backyard pooled paradise no less than the Northridge quake of 1994.On the always overcrowded 233, passage underneath the tracks marks ones arrival into this old "New City", and on arrival back to grade level, above a row of bulldozers, opposite "the Plant", a billboard proclaims "hundreds of great places to hang out in L.A.", as if asking "so what the hell are you doing here?"

Attachment

A woman in her 60s is looking at a brochure on face injections. Before and after photographs reveal wrinkles and less wrinkles around closed mouths. From her purse, she removes a tiny booklet with smiling sun on the cover and glances at the Bible verses inside.

In the 1930s the De Beers diamond cartel with the marketing brilliance of N.W. Ayer transformed an abundant colorless stone into a mandatory overpriced engagement ecstasy for young Americans. In the 1960s De Beers hired J. Walter Thompson to internationalize the delirium. Greatest success came in Japan where attaching diamonds to 'modern western values' meant every 'progressive' Japanese couple now dreamed of yen-laden sparkles.

Throughout most of the twentieth century few consumers knew the savage conditions under which mostly African diamond miners slaved. However, in the 1990s the role of diamonds in funding wars in Angola, Sierra Leone, Democratic Republic of Congo and Liberia led to campaigns demanding a stop to the cartel's complicity. Despite an agreement reached in 2003 to end bloodshed by the rock, human rights groups say promises have gone unfulfilled.

Regardless, as shown in a searing photo essay from Foreign Policy Magazine, miners continue to work in harsh environments and suffer destitution in fulfilling the romantic fantasy of a waitress at TGIF's in Simi Valley, whose boyfriend, a bartender there, just charged 3 and 1/2 grand on his Capital One MasterCard that he'll attempt to pay back at 13.9% over the next five years.

Diamonds are hardly the only attachment that funds violence and cruelty. The mining of coltan, which reached peak prices from 2000 to 2002, assisted the diamond in funding the Congo wars, where over 3 million died. More recently, despite the peace agreement of 2003, cassiterite has been extracted under threat of mutilation and torture by resource starved rebel armies in the northeast.

From coltan is processed tantalum, a powder essential to the manufacture of featherweight capacitors found in most cellphones. Likewise cassiterite, which is seen as an environmentally friendly alternative to lead, is used to solder the elaborate micro electronic components that bring wireless connectivity to life.

The woman looks over at me. "Cellphone?"
I look at her quizzically.
"Cellphone?" She asks again.
I shake my head.
My emptiness chills me. Then I think, "What if it rings?"

As we pass the Catholic Church at White Oak and Ventura the two young men on the back seat cross themselves. The woman sees them and smiles.