Reflections on ALOUD LA Conversation with Deanne Stillaman on her book Mustang

by B.J. on 6/26/2008 10:31:00 PM 0 comments Print this post

I didn't grow up around any horses, I've never ridden one, unless you count the ponys at Griffith park, but I decided to go to a lecture on the history of the wild horse in American history with Deanne Stillman.

I'm a city kid. LA Kid. Yellow-ish-brown kid born in an age of hyper- and inter-dependence on hip-hop and technological infrastructure.

From my viewpoint, what I wanted to learn more about was how these horses or mustangs were used in transportational infrastructure. I was inspired by an article I had read a few months earlier, From Horse to Horsepower.

However, I didn't quite find that information in this lecture, this conversation but nontheless still interesting.


What she wanted to convey with the book was that the horse was the animal that helped define America as a nation. Indigenous to this continent. A silent witness to our battles in war. Our real best friend in nature. Very important to our identity as Americans she says.

What's most striking however is her very real, very personal attachment to the horse. She not only grew up around them, but in her own words, "horses litteraly saved [her] life." She briefly touched on how she went from riches to rags. When that happened, she moved to the "wrong side of the tracks." The horses galloped to the rescue and gave her mom her first job, as an Equestrian trainer.

However as time progressed, gradually friends and relatives began to distance themselves away from her. It was during these rough times where she learned life lessons critical for her inspiration to the books.

Tidbits of Interest:

1) The Horse is indigenous to the Americas, crossed the Bering Land Strait, and moved back with the Conquistadors. The entire population of Mustangs began with just 16 horses!

2) By the turn of the 19th century there were over 3 million horses. Today there are only about 23,000.

3) Cattle and sheepmen hate(d) mustangs because they stole from cows.

4) The same way that Horses built America on the battlefield, Horses built Hollywood.

5) Herds of wild horses need at least 100 to be genetically viable. We don't see a lot of that today.

6) The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has 4 million cattle on Public Lands, to produce 3% of beef, which according to her isn't much. She says that livestock has a very powerful lobby. In comparison, there are only 6,000 on BLM lands.

7) Under the Bush administration, a piece of legislation sponsored by Conrad Burns

Reflections:

1) Horses are never really "domesticated." According to the author which was received as a joke, they can "go wild" in 2 seconds. I was wondering about this in metaphor to transportation. You can't really control the car either; it's fluid, we depend on it to the extent that we don't just chop it up and kill it when it's done.

2) I am ambivalent to her call to action. One of her points to join the cause is that the horses are critical to American identity, the American cowboy which I'm not sure I care too much for. America the whole, doesn't really define me as part of its national fabric, so why again should this have any meaning for me? However, I do enjoy the bit that inspires her to keep doing her work and at least more curious at best.

If you're interested in more, her article is dropping right about...here.

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You Betta Recognize.

by B.J. on 4/06/2008 11:35:00 PM 0 comments Print this post

In an information overloaded age here in America where what you see on TV, radio is glitz and glam, I think what people of "minority" status whether in race, age, gender, ethnicity, etc. want for their causes is...recognition. Recognition of the obstacles still faced. Recognition of achievements. Recognition of specific in-roads and actions taken by their people. Ultimately, recognition as legit and equal powers.

The opposite of recognition is reductionism. Reduction is oversimplifying. Oversimplifying, which generally doesn't promote connective thinking and understanding. Oversimplifying, putting blood, sweat, and tears into cheap, digestable, words. Oversimplifying, to put in broad blocks without understanding the curves, grooves, and boundaries. Oversimplifying genocide. Think of how easy it is to dismiss the fact that there were over 10 million American Indians in this land before the arrival of Columbus. It's just as easy to say that Indians had it coming to them and it's their fault. What's worse is that it's easier to spread ignorance and hate than it is to think and debate.


It's easy to oversimplify the impact of slavery by saying that you never owned one. Oversimplifying the impact of years of Jim Crow Laws. Oversimplifying the effects of redlining, blockbusting, and steering, taking out the property taxes and slapping down your schools. Oversimplifying race issues to be just the black and the white. Oversimplifying the effects of the Chinese Exclusion Acts of 1905, The Natonal Origins Act of 1924, the Recission Act of 1946, the Immigration Act of 1965. Oversimplifying a group of unified, diverse people to be mono-thinking because its tiring to think of them as actually having opinions.

Cognition is a way of putting something into your consciousness. Recognition implies that you have thought of something before in your consciousness and now acknowledge it. Were at a point where there's been cognition but no recognition for our communities, no acknowledgment. What makes the difference between congition and recognition is that in cognition, you don't smell, see, hear, taste, feel the process, the patterns as you've smelt, seen, heard, and felt before. What everyone outside the communities sees as patterns is the oversimplified, square clean-cut version of history and as people. The problem is that if they only recognize those patterns of oversimplified, square clean-cut history, they expect only oversimplified, square, clean-cut answers. And when they expect only oversimplified answers, they get mad that when you begin to tell your stories of complexity.

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by B.J. on 11/07/2003 01:43:00 AM 0 comments Print this post

History of East Hollywood

The part that no one ever acknowledges because its about as sanitary as a Dmanisian fossil. Geez, there's no respect for the dirty places, even though they've got more wisdom.

Hollywoodland was all farmland, first of all. Now the only thing green is the toxic shit on those bumpy ass roads.

It's interesting to see how my city evolved so quickly, wondering about who roamed where and how things got started. Fun shit all the time.

But here are the interesting tidbits about the history of the landmarks we see today bulletpointed and packaged for you:

-Children's Hospital was built in 1913

-The Vons (Safeway for Nor Cal fools) located on Virgil and Sunset was the movie set for an old movie called Intolerance. The William Fox Studio (predecessor to 20th century Fox) was located on Western and Sunset.

-That old Cahuenga library was built in 1916 and named after the Cahug-Na Indians who lived in a stretch of Atwater Village to Hollywood.

-That broken down piece of shit that is called LACC used to be University of California, Southern Branch in 1919. But that university relocated 12 miles to a ranch called Westwood and now calls itself UCLA.

-The church of Scientology buildings oun Fountain used to be the Cedars of Lebanon Hospital. It was built in 1930. Cedars of Lebanon eloped with Cedars-Sinai in Beverly Hills in 1976.

-The Hollywood freeway (101) was built from 1947-1949. Read and see pictures of freeways.
-Kaiser was built in 1953.

Heavy thanks to this site.

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History of Parking Meters

by B.J. on 10/30/2003 09:11:00 AM 0 comments Print this post

Do you ever remember ever thinking that you would kill the guy who invented some annoyance like school, lawyers, or parking meters ?

Well, I got the name of one of those punks who created these annoyances: Carl C. Magee, the parking meter.

Feel free to dig him up and successively pelt him with pennies till you feel like he or someone else gets the message.

"The world's first installed parking meter was in Oklahoma City, on July 16, 1935. Mr. Magee had been appointed to the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce traffic committee, and was assigned the task of solving the parking problems in downtown Oklahoma City. Apparently, folks who worked in the area were parking on downtown streets, staying all day, and leaving few spaces for shoppers and others who visited the central business district."


"Magee's solution was to install parking meters, charge for the use of the parking spaces, and turn over those spaces that would otherwise have been filled by all day parkers. In addition, the parking meters would generate revenue for a growing city. It must have worked, as the idea of metered parking eventually caught on worldwide. From that early beginning, the use of parking meters by municipalities, colleges and universities, and private parking facilities has increased to the point that today, in the United States alone, there are an estimated five million parking meters in use."

Read more and thanks to this site

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by B.J. on 9/08/2003 04:32:00 AM 0 comments Print this post

Highway System in Los Angeles

(Heavy thanks to this site. And this site. And this site.)

The story of highways in general is interesting because it brings to consciousness standardization within cultures and other crap like that.

It can take you from LA to Frisco (101), from Cal Poly Pomona to San Luis Obispo (OK, I'm not really sure how to do that). There's a sort of mystery to every little town like Soledad or Gonzalez I pass every time I make the trip up the 101, the El Camino Real, which used to link the 21 California missions to get to school. I've been intrigued by those mysteries and the histories of every town's inhabitants.

But Los Angeles is interesting in its own way. It brought the first freeway in the 6, the Arroyo Seco Freeway, which has since become the 110 according to this timeline. It also established its own standards in the way highway signs were made as dotted out in this picture, from the fonts to the system used to tell the distance from an exit.



Notice that the signs are in white and black, rather than the standard green and white starting in 1964 today. This photo was taken in 1966 at Sunset Boulevard on the 405.

Kriske.com provides more thorough explanation:

"Early guide signs were crude and usually specific to the particular location. However, in 1956, state highway engineers developed a number of specific guidelines for creating signs to be standardized across the state.

The overhead sign that is now typical of all interstates was first used in California along heavily travelled urban freeway segments, and as of 1956 the Golden State was using overhead signing more extensively than any other state. Another California innovation was the use of white lettering on a black background, which enhanced visibility and legibility. Vestiges of these antique signs can still be found, most notably the black sign along Northbound Interstate 5 at the I-210/CA 14 truck route separation. Due to its success in California, this light-on-dark scheme was later incorporated for use in Interstate guide signs (using Green instead of Black) into the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD), which specifies signage requirements for the Interstate (and Federal ?) System."



This photo was taken in 1974. Two things are radically different from those days as the Pasadena 11 has become the Pasadena 110, and the "Bakersfield" destination has been replaced with Sacramento.



The 7 freeway since 1985 has become the 710.



The 99, 6, and 134 freeways in 1959.



Now it's just the 5 and the 134.



Now the 10, 110 South to San Pedro, and 110 North to Pasadena. Notice how the US Routes were not the solid white that it is today, as seen on freeways like the 101.

Last but not least, there's a nice historical picture of the 101 and 5 that is too big to fit on this blog.

And for more info on freeways, there's this site. You can learn the full details on Interstates, how they numbered the highways, and pretty much anything about highways.

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by B.J. on 8/30/2003 10:58:00 AM 0 comments Print this post

History of Porno

Yup. Finding the history of porno with just a google search can be annoying as most of the useful information is found in books that cost $340, but I did my best.

There was erotica in Greek and Roman times. Before pornography, apparently there was plenty of build-up, manifested in erotic writing, challenging the perils of censorship. A lot of the writers at the time from Shakespeare to Chaucer implicitly tapped on eroticism. And writers kept pushing the bounds of censorship until the Victorian times.

Then all hell finally busted loose.

Explicit artifacts were discovered at Pompeii during the Victorian period, more than 2 centuries ago. This random guy online, Fenton Bailey tells the audience, "The question that faced them was what to do with the abundance of lewd artefacts they found that were obviously part of everyday life for the ancient Romans?"

"The solution was to place them in a "secret museum", where "gentlemen with appropriate demeanour (and ready cash for the custodian), would be admitted to the locked chamber where controversialities lurked; women, children and the poor of both sexes and all ages were excluded". The idea of the secret museum caught on with museums all over Europe setting up their own restricted collections, from l'Enfer in Paris to the Private Case at the British Library in London."

So began the institution of porn. According to Bailey, the difference between the erotica of the Greek and Roman times and this porn is that erotica is natural lovemaking, whilst porn is mechanical masturbation. "In short, if you jerk off to it, it [pornography] can have no other redeeming value."

This label of mechanical masturbation on porn is why I can't see porn as some type of art, unlike these girls (it's another drab article, not a pic) who consider themselves artists.

Nowadays, the porn industry has encountered plenty of exposure via the internet and has done battle in the court system. For any of that drab crap, you can look it up on google.

But the porn itself looks the same, only with differing styles in accordance with the time and place some material was concocted. You can find stuff from that time if you look up "vintage" on a google search. Same old sleaze.

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by B.J. on 8/17/2003 09:34:00 PM 0 comments Print this post

History of the Spanish "Lisp": Urban Legend or Real Deal ?

People from Spain generally pronounce the letter 's' with a 'th' sound. It's a very lispy sound, and so I shall refer to this pronunciation as the 'lisp'. It's one thing I learned in 9th grade Spanish 1 from teacher supreme Miss Eckert and have taken with me since then. For the past few weeks, this topic of the Spanish 'lisp' has hijacked the center of my thoughts, and I've been speculating that "probably some dictator started speaking with a lisp and it spread like a cancer." Turns out:

Weehee. My gut feelings are the shit. I showed you, world (and Cress).

"According to legend, the lisp became common in Castillian because one of the Spanish kings (generally identified as Felipe V or Carlos V) spoke with a lisp, and his courtiers did not want to embarrass him by speaking otherwise."

However some punk at about.com seeks a more "refined" answer

This guy basically rambles on about how the Spanish 'lisp' is just an urban legend. He says that the 'lisp' is just a part of the culture, that the Spanish pronunciation of the 's' does not fit the definition of a 'lisp'.

However, on his psuedo-throne above all other students of Spanish, he fails to cite other historical facts that would combat the contention of this popular legend. The focus of his article was to dispell how the 'lisp' in the language originated with a dictator, but he went into a completely different tangent and discussed how the 'lisp' is not really a 'lisp'. Of course it's not really a lisp, it's how the Spaniards pronounce the 's' sound, but I still want to know on a more detailed level about how this 'lisp' became the norm.

So for now, I'm right.

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by B.J. on 8/13/2003 08:43:00 AM 0 comments Print this post

History of Garbage

So this morning I was knocked out in a state of homeostasis when at 6 in the morning the perenially loud-ass garbage truck awakened and forced me to fight back for my state of peacefulness. I was tired anyway so I knocked out. But the truck wasn't finished because it didn't even pick up the trash on my side of the street.

At 7:20 A.M., the truck returned for more. And after a long fight to keep that state of homeostasis, here I am an hour later in the morning slightly groggy trying to blog about this. The truck bothering me is nothing new.

The weekly garbage run does not upset me because it's expected and I know, in the words of 'Yell, the garbage dude's "just doing his job." I even talk from time to time about how I'd enjoy such a job as being a garbage man because in the words of the Office Space punks, I'd be "makin' bucks, gettin' exercise." On top of that, I'd also actually be an actual productive member of society. But what intrigues me most is the mystery of garbage collecting. I've always wondered where the hell these garbage trucks came from and how they were developed, so I present: a timeline history of garbage and a history of garbage trucks !

(Thanks to Tigerdude for the pictures.)


The first covered garbage trucks in the 1930s which was also the first to use hydraulics to dump the trash off somewhere. It was first made in Britain in the 1920's where the population density was/is much greater.


However, the garbage guys always had to tirelessly lift the trash. So this "external hopper" was created for easy loading circa the 1930s and used in the 1940s and 50s. But they were quickly replaced by rear loader compactors because of efficiency.


Here's a local ad for an 'external hopper' garbage truck in South Pasadena.


This is an earlier version of the side loader circa the 1950s that comes every week to bother me and pick up the trash.


This is the front-end loader that is known and loved today with its concept taken from those beloved external hopper trucks.

I skipped a few trucks because I didn't think they were that interesting, but you can check more of them out right about. . . . . . . . . . . .here.

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by B.J. on 7/27/2003 05:27:00 PM 0 comments Print this post

Trippin'

Happy Korean War Armistice Day 50 Years ago !

Just to let you know, that this will be a really bad post because I'm tired, but the topic is something that has recurred in my head ever since I was a high school junior in AP US History. In direct contradiction to my digitalramen post, the neurons in my head are on overdrive; they have not downgraded, but overgraded. And this overdone neuron firing is tiring for me.

Let me begin the rant:

People are trippin' . This society dominated by the 'want' continues its assault on the need. People don't need a house in the Hamptons. Wants deserved to be charged. Material wants as a business are completely obliterating material needs. No (or barely any) need for needs. Don't know what I'm talking about ? Check out your liquor store and all dayumn brown people lining up for this the latest 148 million dollar jackpot. My parents themselves have probably spent over $400 the last few years by giving in a mere $1 each time they wanted to play the lotto. We could have definitely found a use for those 400 bucks to paying off stupid credit cards or something.

Unless I'm selling something :sigh:, I don't tell people what to do with their money because it's their business, but what rich folk do with their money creates too much separation from the rest of society. It's just getting worse.

Zion I sung it best in this song called. . .Trippin':

Original master, architect
Intel-lect, respect
My heart full of splinters
Agitating, so frustrating
Letting dreams stay as dreams
What are you waiting, for?
Feel the score, deep in your center
Immaculate is the conception enter
My dragon ways, for so many days
I rode on a ship with a hull full of slaves
A foreign land, foreign mind, foreign time
A foreign design to keep my people blind
I'm, a rebel in a system that don't give a {fuck}
Where CEO's feed your death
To earn a buck
And people get stuck
Followin the trends
Of a TV generation
But where does it end?
You can say amen
But you really got to feel it
Then every time you see a snake
You'll reveal it

[hook]

Seem like everybody trippin'
Or is it me, bein normal nowadays
It'll drive you crazy
Go to work 9 to 5 everyday, no retreat
You got to have a dollar
Just to get somethin' to eat
It seem like everybody trippin'
Or is it I? Crazy lady walkin around
Shoutin curses at the sky
Instrumentals be the lullaby
Rhyme stimulai, now come along
And vibe as we praise most eyes
You be trippin'
Why is you trippin, why is you trippin'?

[Zion]
Now in this rap consortium
There's a whole colosium
Of fake rap cats
Who tax human beings
Just a micro-cosm
Of a larger macro-problem
I sit with my pen and pad
Imagine ways to solve 'em
You can call me a dreamer

But I do not need a Beamer
To validate existence
I'm blessed in every instance
False pretense
Is what angers me the most
I'm good at counter attacks
Don't try to play me close
Don't toke toast, just roast
With my rhythm and give 'em
A hundred percent of what i'm livin
If it seemed like super ???
God must've lied
When he told me he will die
On the road that i fly
Keepin' me high
Rockin till the day that i die
If i told y'all people once
???????????????????????

why is you trippin? why is you tripppin?

[hook]

[Zion]
Most of us settle for less
Which really ain't fresh
I travel east to west
To chart progress
I found the common denominator
To always be stressed
And make me loose my breath
To think about the death
That happened when we rappin
But we just keep clappin
I pause for a second
Respect to the dead...
And let it enter in your head
Too many things on my brain
In this wicked game
TV, fear, pain,Will leave you stained
Welcome to the other side
They said it never rained
You'll never win a game
Where the rules always change
First a college degree
Now a PHD
But if you got black skin
You need at least about three
Combat, in the illest ???
Verbally, with the solar energy
To let the people be free
Because we, are ?????

[hook]

Our society is going down the shitter in terms of actually helping out disadvantaged people. It's trippin' over luxuries when there are still a lot of needs.

While "hella" people still do charity (which isn't the best way to help IMHO, read here), our population continues to grow and the gaps between middle and working class are heightened. A lot of folk in the media seem to be fairly liberal even to the point where a corporation like AOL starts reporting conscious stuff such as how the media might be to blame. That tells me that corporations have merely found safe issues to be liberal and in with it to broaden their appeal. These corporation folks seem to be individually liberal rather than the liberal that effects change because change could possibly threaten their business. Basically those in the media can't do anything, but if they do, it's for 'charity' or they are painted as some type of 'radical.' Even the most proactive and concerned of us without the burden of media in activist groups such as Environment California do barely anything to help disadvantaged people as they themselves are becoming self-interested corporate entities full of standards and quotas to meet.

I can't really blame people, the middle-class, or anyone for this trippage in help to disadvantaged because we all have this reactive nature. For example, when someone A needs someone B for something, someone A will kiss someone B's ass up to the point where someone A can taste the poo. People only become proactive when they feel or think that something positive will result. . .(this isn't finished). . .

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