As always: many of us get too many emails already, even before this pandemic. So, if you would like to be removed from this email list, please feel free to say so. (No reason needed; and you won’t be the first to do so.)
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Monday, December 28:
OMG. I have been hoping for rain since Thanksgiving, and did it finally arrive. We were awoken a few minutes after midnight to the sound of rain pelting our windows. Pouring rain, lightning strokes and thunder claps, and gusty heavy winds driving the rain drops against the window panes. It was the rain that first woke us; after that it would have been the lightning flashes and thunder. The most violent storm I have been in for a least 30 years.
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Nadine and I are very traditional when it comes to reading. We do not use electronic readers, for either the newspapers or for books. We prefer to have the paper-and-ink originals in our hands. Although the word "originals" probably is not appropriate here, since the newspapers seem to often release news articles earlier on their websites than in the print additions. But you know what I mean.
We get both the NYTimes and the LATimes delivered each day outside our apartment door, almost always arriving by 7AM. They used to come wrapped separately, but are now much smaller than "before". And now both come packaged together, except on Sunday. Recently we got a Saturday delivery that included not just the newspapers, but also three separate real estate sections: one entitled "Your Crowning Achievement" by Sothebys, one entitled "VIEW" with a slick cover by Coldwell Banker, and one for a lot of other RE firms. These three sections, measured in depth of paper, where at least two to three times thicker than the two papers themselves. But I guess that this advertising helps to fund the publication of the news.
Does anyone remember when Harry Shearer did a weekly Sunday morning "Le Show" from KCRW, Santa Monica, "Home of the Homeless". One of his opening bits was to read, with a large dose of sarcasm in his voice, the lead article in the LATimes RE section, featuring an expensive local residential listing. Somehow the descriptions of these very expensive homes seems especially tone deaf to the suffering that many Angelinos are going thru at this time.
What else are the locals up to? A news article says that plastic surgeons are doing a booming business. People are seeing a lot of their own faces on Zoom squares...and not liking what they see. So it's off to get some "work done".
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Little miracles are all around us: most years in the past, I have planted my winter garden from seedlings of cabbages and chard. I got the seedlings from a seller at the Hollywood Farmers Market named Peter Lee. This year, for a variety of reasons, I did not get the seedlings from Peter. Also, I have been delayed because the usual winter rains did not start at Thanksgiving this year, but just now. I decided to grow seedlings in our apartment, and transplant them later to the garden. I ordered the seeds from Burpee and got old egg cartons from Nadine, and put the seeds into the soil and watered them. The chard seeds are the size of a grain of rice, but the cabbage seeds are tiny, the size of a small pepper grain. Now, just a few days later, up they are coming.
This is the last of my "Coronavirus: Los Angeles" emails for 2020. What a year!! Nadine said that for her, January 20th will feel like the start of a new year. I agree.
The pandemic is not over yet. Wear your mask and keep your distance for some months more. Hoping that 2021 and the 46th Presidency of the USA will be happier, healthier, safer and less anxiety provoking for all of us.
Coleman
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