Results tagged "Los Angeles"

I remember wishing that I could feel more.

10 years seems too long ago. Living in our apartment in Portsmouth–just north of Boston, having just quit my full time job to be a freelance designer. I wish now that I hadn’t procrastinated that morning and wasn’t in my bathrobe when the 2nd plane hit. I stayed in it for most of the day. I was so far away. There was nothing I could do. I still feel helpless when I think about it. Because, just like every other American, I remember every second of that day.

My best friend had just moved to Los Angeles, and I had just flown back from seeing her. I had driven there with her, across the country and the feeling of this great land was still fresh in my mind. I returned via Logan Airport in Boston where flight 11 took off from. Could it have been the same plane? Later I learned that the pilot was from a neighboring town, Stratham, NH. I called my Mom. Panicked. My Dad was in New York City — in another trophy building, nonetheless. He had an office in the Twin Towers too. What were the chances? I called and called with the lines going nowhere — my Mom — My Dad’s office. Finally my Mom called me. He was fine.

I called Bill — my now husband, at work. I called my friend in California. I called my Mom again. I couldn’t stop calling people — eyes glued to the television. Why? Tears pouring down my face. No. Not happening. I threw up. The day went on and I thought of everyone I knew that might have been killed. Hurt. Annie, my sister, called me from Australia where she was studying abroad. She was so displaced and didn’t understand — I told her that I didn’t either. They said it was terrorism. Everything was going to change and everyone everywhere was effected.

Later that night I drank too much wine. The news media had become too much. Someone mentioned a possible threat on the Empire State Building and I lost my mind. My Dad was still in the city — only blocks away. My head started spinning and I called my Mom again. She insisted that I not let them–the media, get to me. I breathed through it, standing against the wall in our kitchen, crying. Our neighbors upstairs were playing guitars out on the deck and I started to think that I had no business in taking the attacks personally. Some of the parents of my sister Kate’s classmates (then in high school) were among the missing… Simply not returning on the train home from work. I thought about the car accident that I was in several years before — one that left me with slight PTSD and the loss of feeling in most of my right hand. The ambulance ride. The paramedics. The smell of I-95 encrusted on my clothing. It should have been a fatal accident but we were spared by the Guardian Angels sitting on our laps. I tried my hardest to imagine what it must have been like to be in New York City, the Pentagon or on one of the planes but I couldn’t come close, and as I stare at the scar the car accident left on my hand, I still can’t. Bill and I couldn’t sleep, despite the alcohol. We agreed to not watch the television except for one or two hours from that point forward, a plan that lasted for about ten minutes.

A woman I knew through work was on the plane from Boston. We had only met once during a meeting a few months before at my old job. I had heard that she quit her job as well and was going back to California, where she was from. I barely knew her, and yet suddenly she became a fixture in my mind. She was simply trying to go home.

I didn’t want to be in New York, but I didn’t want to be where I was in New Hampshire either. I was blessed with not losing loved ones. But I couldn’t help thinking that if I could just feel what it is like to be witnessing all of this terror firsthand, then I might be able to understand. Then I might be able to find some kind of juxtaposition in fate and how things happen to other people while the rest of us just watch. There’s just a little something pathetic feeling about having to remember that day and how removed I was while so many were suffering. How the varying degrees of how each individual was effected found me way out in the spectrum of barely touched. Because that’s most of what I remember — the feeling, and how I didn’t think that I was feeling enough for the enormity of the situation, which may never end.

 

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Guest Bird #4  – Sylvia

Palm Springs is in the Coachella Valley (in the desert) about 100 miles east of Los Angeles.  It’s hot — it was in the 80′s or 90′s every day in October, and it rarely rains!  It does get up to 115 degrees in the summer, so most people do not live here year-round.
 
Palm Springs was sparsely populated until the arrival of air conditioning in the 1940′s!  Then it became a hotspot where Hollywood came to play.  The town really kicked into cocktail hour in the late 1940′s and 1950′s when Frank Sinatra, Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Lucille Ball (our friend Susie owns Lucille Ball’s former home in Thunderbird Country Club), Cary Grant, Clark Gable, Jack Benny, the Gabor sisters, Red Skelton, Dinah Shore, Liberace, and Kirk Douglas moved in.  Some of these entertainers would “break in” their routines at clubs here, before headlining the showrooms of Las Vegas.  Palm Springs was the ideal escape — at the time it was a dusty 4-hour drive from Los Angeles and inaccessible enough that there were few paparazzi…  In the 1950′s golf took over, and many people lived inside “country clubs”, which turns out to be a great idea NOWADAYS (good security, private, quiet, safe, etc.)

These affluent vacationers wanted their second homes to be beautiful and different.  Wood disintegrates in the desert, so the architects who came here started designing homes with glass, stone, steel, and concrete.  They wanted differing rooflines:  curvy, butterfly, zig-zag, pointy.  And, they wanted transparency between being “indoors” and “outdoors”, lots of skylights, and interior spaces more “open” and minimal.  Thus the architectural style known as “Palm Springs Modern” was born, also referred to as Mid-Century Modern.  Palm Springs Modernism reflects Hollywood, tourism, the desert, and wealth.  Similar forces existed in Los Angeles, but in Palm Springs they were concentrated in a small, isolated area.  The architects who subsequently became famous for this innovative, daring, unique style are:  Richard Neutra, A. Quincy Jones, Paul R. Williams, Albert Frey, E. Stewart Williams, William Cody, Donald Wexler, Palmer and Krisel, and John Lautner.
 
Palm Springs has recently developed a dedicated group of modern preservationists, as many of the mid-century homes were to be knocked down.  In 2002, the 1963 Maslon House at Tamarisk Country Club, one of only three homes in the area designed by Neutra, was demolished and this ignited American Modern preservation in Palm Springs.  My in-laws (members of Tamarisk Country Club) were very close friends of the Maslons, and spent a LOT of time at this house.  In 1960, Samuel and Luella Maslon started working very closely with Richard Neutra to design a house to hold their extensive contemporary art collection.  The property was two acres (the Maslon’s purchased THREE lots), it was on the fairway, and it had a very desirable mountain view.  After Sam and Luella died, their heirs put the house up for sale.  It was purchased in 2002 by Richard Rotenberg for $2.45 million.  About 30 days later, my mother-in-law was playing golf at Tamarisk.  When she got to the 12th hole, she saw to her complete horror — the Maslon house was being torn down.  She immediately stopped playing golf, ran home, and called the Maslon’s daughter (an attorney in Boston) to inform her of what she had just seen.  The daughter said, “The buyer PROMISED to keep the house intact.”  My mother-in-law said, “Did you get that in writing?”  The response was, “No, it was on a hand-shake.”  I can’t remember what my mother-in-law said next, but the Maslon’s daughter hasn’t spoken to her since!
 
For some fascinating reading about presidents and celebrities and their homes in Palm Springs, read excerpts here from:  Palm Springs Legends: Creation of a Desert Oasis (start with Chapter 29 and keep reading!)
 
When viewing the photos below, please hover your mouse over the word “Notes” on the lower right side, so that you’ll be able to see the descriptions!

Great books I recommend:

• Julius Shulman: Palm Springs
• Palm Springs Weekend: The Architecture and Design of a Midcentury Oasis
• Palm Springs Modern

 
Palm Springs Modern links:

• 2010 Palm Springs Modernism Week
• 2010 Palm Springs Modernism Show & Sale
• The Palm Springs Modern Committee
• Palm Springs Preservation Foundation
• Palm Springs Art Museum:  Architecture and Design Council

Sylvia grew up in central
California, spent 20+ years working in Manhattan, and is currently trying to sell her New York house–located in Hamptons. You can connect with Sylvia, a Diva at Networking, via http://twitter.com/SylviaEnder and http://www.linkedin.com/in/SylviaEnder.

This is Sylvia’s second For the Birds Landing. You can find her first post here.

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