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Editorial Opinion / No. 2 / December 2003
This page is open for contributions |
This building may have seen better days,
but it is a classic of its type |
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| The Sun believes that the Reeves Building on the northwest corner of Venice Blvd. and Wade St. is a gem of its era (probably late 1920s) and urges the Mar Vista Community Council to take action to protect it from further deterioration. Once we lose that delicate Neon arrow faintly seen against the blue sky, it’s gone forever. |
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| Speaking of historical treasures . . . |
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The Sun wants to congratulate husband and wife Hans Adamson and Amanda Seward for their successful campaign to have the Gregory Ain Houses in Mar Vista made into a historic preservation overlay zone, or HPOZ.
Well, better late than never, because all this took place last spring: In a rare burst of poetry, the L.A. City Council noted on March 14 that
". . . the architecture of these 52 homes constructed in 1948 is modest and consistent, the trees give each street a distinct personality — ficus with wide branching roots on Beethoven, shaggy melaleucas on Moore, and magnolias with dark glossy leaves on Meier. Woven together, the houses and vegetation achieve a sense of unity, a mix of radical and rustic."
These homes, looking so modest from the street, were, the City Council said:
" . . . one of Los Angeles' most intriguing social experiments in his [Ain's] design for a bucolic housing development in Mar Vista that was meant to provide an affordable alternative to the vastly dispiriting postwar housing then spreading across the country."
Not to be forgotten by the council was landscape architect Garrett Eckbo, whom an admirer once described as "a pioneer in modern landscape design, not only in relating it to modern art, but by his concept that gardens are for people, and for each individual in particular."
And, as the City Council resolution said:
"Dogs and kids still scamper over the parkways, and neighbors still welcome each other to block parties and backyard brunches."
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These simple designs mask the originality of Gregory Ain's 1948 work. They set an example eventually followed by builders all over the country.
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| In the map below, the yellow properties are nonconforming. |
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| It might be nice if you got your facts straight |
Before you go posting things all over the Web, it might be nice if you got your facts straight on a few issues. Let me see if I can help you.
You state that Walking Man is "the kind of arrant effrontery The Sun would expect from a board composed almost exclusively of homeowners' association people." ["Fire Walking Man."] The present board was not in place when Walking Man was hired to give out information for the election. They were the ones being elected; that is how an election works. The board is first elected, THEN it can make decisions about how to disseminate information.
The Walking Man was given to the Organizing Committee to use free from DONE, the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment. Since the Organizing Committee had no money, they thought it would be a nice way to get out information seeing as how Walking Man's job was SUPPOSED to be to give out the flyers to EVERY door, including those of apartments. The reason we did not continue to use Walking Man after the election was because we realized that Walking Man did not do his job and not everyone was getting the flyers. Because of complaints about people not getting flyers, we have decided to find a new strategy. Our new plan is to create a block captain system which will also include a captain for every apartment complex. If you had been going to Rob Kadota's Safety and Security Committee meetings, you would know this and you would realize how much effort and time he is dedicating to the issue of apartments and relaying information to them.
You also seem to be confused about the issue of posting. There are five official posting sites, and the chair of each committee does see that the agendas get posted 72 hours in advance to each of these sites. Only occasionally, our agendas get taken down or covered up by other posters. I was, in fact, "shlepping around town" my share of the agendas to be posted this very evening. And they are, as you suggest, posted at the Library, at the grocery store — Whole Foods — and on the Web site, among other places.
You also suggest that the board host a "stakeholder block party." ["What would you do with fifty thousand dollars?"] But that is exactly what it does everytime it hosts a required quarterly "Stakeholder Meeting," which the board last put on in October. It did not feature exotic food, however; only Starbucks and snacks like crackers. It did feature gifts donated by local businesses. If it is extremely important to you that it feature donated food instead of donated prizes, perhaps we can take that into consideration for our next Stakeholder Meeting, which we are already beginning to plan.
You make all these suggestions for the budget, yet you never came to the respective committee meetings to suggest these ideas, where they would have been received warmly. You also did not comment about this at the last board meeting where budget issues were decided when we had a "public comment" session. You seem to imply that the issue of how the budget is spent is not open for the community's input. On the contrary, there is a Budget and Finance Committee that is open to the public where all suggestions would be heard; and any time budget issues are decided by the board, they will be mentioned on the agenda, posted 72 hours in advance at any of five posting sites, and there will be time for "public comment" during the meeting.
If your newsletter is really as egalitarian as you say it is, then you should have more than just your own opinions on the opinion page. If you are truly looking for an open discussion, you will also print letters, like this one, that disagree with you.
Your desire not to cooperate with the board is very frustrating to me, Mr. Garrigues, because we would be more than happy to listen to your sometimes incisive and helpful suggestions. Please be more cautious in the future, however, to ensure that the information on your Web site is accurate. Thank you,
Amy Lawrence
(Nov. 11, 2003; the writer is the secretary of the Board of Directors of the Mar Vista Community Council)
(Editor's note: The owner and editor of The Westmar Sun was present at the first meeting of the council's Safety and Security Committee meeting, in September, and was the only person at the October meeting, which had been canceled without his knowledge, and was one of four attendees at the Dec. 3 meeting. The November meeting was also canceled, because of Thanksgiving.)
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It hasn't been an easy time for the editor of The Sun
(poor me!)
By George Garrigues |
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I tell ya, Charlie, I'm going about minding my own business, sitting through boring meetings on behalf of my pitifully few readers when, boom! I find out a Person of High Rank is trying to get my Web host to pull some of my pages off the Internet. Oh, gosh, I am unloved!
I sit around brooding about this, but then I have to trot off to another meeting, and whammo! I run into another Person of High Rank who states, loudly and unequivocally, and right in my face, too, that the meeting is not really a meeting and he/she doesn’t like people who are just “observing” and who mistrusts my motives and, this while all around us people are dining on chutney and other chow (because the gathering — I dare NOT call it a meeting) is in a restaurant, so of course it cannot be observed by anybody, can it?
I am so unnerved by this un-welcome that I can barely take notes, and, if you looked at my notebook, you would see more doodles than words in some parts, but, fortunately, I have my tape recorder so I am able to get some good quotes, including all of those from the friendly person who welcomed me by telling me, in
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effect, to get lost, so if you want to hear it, Charlie, I am willing to play it for you.
Frankly, I do not have the heart to listen to it again, so you don’t get the full dramatic transcript today. Instead, you get this light-hearted editorial which is really covering up the cold chill inside.
You see, Charlie, you are reading the words of a journalist who once spent a weekend in a Detroit jail for taking a photograph of a traffic accident on a public street, so you are not exactly dealing with a wimp, although this editor you are reading now was sufficiently chastened by a couple of days in the clink braiding his shoelaces and eating baloney sandwiches that he is really shy of offending Persons of High Rank for fear they will do him damage in some way.
They call that the “chilling effect” on free speech, and you can read about that here.
No, Charlie, you can’t listen to the tape now. I have to go cover another meeting. And, Charlie, I will try to tell you all about the meeting, unless I am thrown in jail again. |
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