{"id":1251,"date":"2009-02-07T12:27:30","date_gmt":"2009-02-07T19:27:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/heavylittleobjects.com\/?p=1251"},"modified":"2026-02-19T10:29:44","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T18:29:44","slug":"a358-palm-fragment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/heavylittleobjects.com\/?p=1251","title":{"rendered":"#a358 :: Palm fragment"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"020609\"<\/a>Los Angeles jetsam reminds me daily that I live in a freakish magpie’s nest of a city.<\/p>\n

Stolen from aboriginal people<\/a> by Spanish missionaries who gave huge chunks of it away<\/a> to soldiers, whose families then sold it off in ever-decreasing slices and slivers, Los Angeles has always been shaped by grabbers, opportunists and self-reinventors.<\/p>\n

Angelenos take, procure, manufacture, buy, steal, co-opt, give birth to<\/a> or create whatever<\/i> the hell they think they need to move forward …
\nLubricated by commercial\/political struggles over water<\/a> and oil<\/a> and finally fertilized and electrified by booms in aerospace<\/a>, post-war manufacturing<\/a>, Hollywood<\/a> and wave upon wave of immigrants<\/a>, this city is like an immense 50-by-50-mile petri dish: teeming with virulent, ever-mutating cultures of nationality, religion, science, sexuality, sport and art.<\/p>\n

So when I’m shambling across Figueroa Blvd. in a hammering rainstorm USC<\/a> to teach a room full of brilliant multi-cultural computer programmers how to architect social networks for a fictitious neighborhood watch and contemplating whether to eat Thai or Mexican that weekend before or after tackling a new video game or clean out my gutters, it’s no surprise to happen upon this: a wickedly sawtoothed chunk of palm.<\/p>\n

This non-native species<\/a> was imported to L.A. in the 20s and 30s<\/a> to pretty things up.<\/p>\n

And now it is an inextricable part of our mythology.<\/p>\n

That’s why I love living here: Because when it comes to cooking its own ever-evolving recipe for the future, L.A. tosses absolutely whatever the hell it likes into the pot … and keeps stirring.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Los Angeles jetsam reminds me daily that I live in a freakish magpie’s nest of a city. Stolen from aboriginal people by Spanish missionaries who gave huge chunks of it away to soldiers, whose families then sold it off in ever-decreasing slices and slivers, Los Angeles has always been shaped by grabbers, opportunists and self-reinventors. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,6,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-found-object","category-jetsam","category-life-form"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/heavylittleobjects.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/heavylittleobjects.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/heavylittleobjects.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heavylittleobjects.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heavylittleobjects.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1251"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/heavylittleobjects.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1835,"href":"http:\/\/heavylittleobjects.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1251\/revisions\/1835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/heavylittleobjects.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heavylittleobjects.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heavylittleobjects.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}