Friday, August 19, 2016

Friday, August 19, 2016

Tonight's picture was taken in March of 2008. Mattie was staying with my parents in Los Angeles, while I went to a conference. When I got back from the conference, we toured around town together. This was Mattie at the Arboretum. We walked through the bamboo and as you can see Mattie loved it. Mattie liked the maze like feeling that bamboo produced and in fact he was intrigued by bamboo even as a baby! Whenever I go to the Arboretum now and pass this same patch of bamboo, I can't help but think of Mattie and this moment in time!





Quote of the day: Never let a day pass that you will have cause to say, I will do better tomorrow. ~ Brigham Young

This is the view outside my parent's windows. It is a very different sight from my life in Washington, DC. Here it is a very peaceful, quiet, and somewhat isolated.

Yet within minutes of driving, you are right in the heart of the city of Burbank, made famous by Johnny Carson.

This is what Burbank is known for... motion picture studios....... Warner Bros., Universal Studios, Disney, and NBC.

There is NO doubt you are in Los Angeles, when surrounded by palm trees and no humidity.

This is the view of the city
of Burbank from up in the Hills.

The city of Burbank.

My mom and I went to walk around Fashion Square Mall today. Of course it NO LONGER looks like this. This was how the mall used to look like from the 1960s through 1980s. In fact, when I was in high school, the mall was still like this.... an outdoor mall. Now of course it is two stories tall and enclosed. It looks like any other mall, which is unfortunate. However, I remember it when it was simpler and truly community oriented. Some things are not progress or an improvement.

But what truly stayed with me today were the characters and attitudes of those around me at the mall. I never felt like I fit into Southern California as a teenager, but now as an adult, this feeling is even more heightened. To me it is a very different culture here and what I observed at the mall today was what I would call age discrimination and distain. Many of the sales clerks are twenty somethings and they made me feel as if I did not exist or was even worth paying attention to. I have very little tolerance for this attitude or to feel disrespected. All I can say is one particular sales clerk was lucky I was with my mom, because if I were alone she wouldn't have known what hit her. This is a feeling I have NEVER experienced in Washington, DC and though I have issues with the DC area at times, it is my hope that this Los Angeles materialistic mind set remains here.