Continue reading Bundles of joy, however fleeting.
Meet the man who's documenting every block of downtown L.A. - for free
It's Thursday morning, and Eric Richardson is in his office - a Starbucks at the corner of 11th Street and Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles. It's one of the many "offices" he frequents, depending on whether he would rather use the Internet or be closer to a press conference.
"I can tell you where to find WiFi and public restrooms all across downtown," he said.
It's Thursday morning, and Eric Richardson is in his office - a Starbucks at the corner of 11th Street and Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles. It's one of the many "offices" he frequents, depending on whether he would rather use the Internet or be closer to a press conference.
"I can tell you where to find WiFi and public restrooms all across downtown," he said.
Continue reading Eric Richardson's Downtown.
On the steps of City Hall on Saturday, delegates from a 'Congress of Neighborhoods' across Los Angeles sat down to meet, eat and learn about this new Facebook thing.
Designed to bring neighborhood councils together to discuss issues ranging from gang reduction to trash collection, the event also gave community leaders from far-flung areas the means to get and stay connected - both through new-media strategies and old-media handshakes.
Al Abrams (left) and Terry Gomes (right) co-chaired the event. "I'm excited to see the energy, enthusiasm and talent of all of the residents of the city gathered in one place," Abrams said.
Students from City Year volunteered at the event, bussing tables and helping clean up. City Year is a national nonprofit that brings 17- to 24-year-olds from around the country to urban areas to work in education and other fields.
Mac Freeman, a 21-year-old from Tifton, Georgia, teaches at a nearby school but volunteered his Saturday to help with the event. "It's really positive to see the neighbors getting together and talking," he said.
Mark Peterson, a cycling advocate, came to learn about social networking and to meet up with cyclists from other neighborhoods.
Mark Seigel, right, is a representative from Sunland-Tujunga, what he calls the "bastard stepchild of L.A." He said he had polarized views about the gathering. "The Mayor is very good at lying about statistics," he said. "He talks about how the crime went down in percentages - but what are the actual numbers? There's no clear picture of what's going on."
Stephen Box, left, led two of the 'breakout session' that took place inside City Hall later in the day. His 'Get Connected' sessions focused on driving Web traffic, mastering social network sites and building community in the digital era.
Stephanie, 13, watches her nephew Damien, 1, in the 10th-floor hallway while waiting for her parents to get out of a budget session.
Designed to bring neighborhood councils together to discuss issues ranging from gang reduction to trash collection, the event also gave community leaders from far-flung areas the means to get and stay connected - both through new-media strategies and old-media handshakes.
Al Abrams (left) and Terry Gomes (right) co-chaired the event. "I'm excited to see the energy, enthusiasm and talent of all of the residents of the city gathered in one place," Abrams said.
Students from City Year volunteered at the event, bussing tables and helping clean up. City Year is a national nonprofit that brings 17- to 24-year-olds from around the country to urban areas to work in education and other fields.
Mac Freeman, a 21-year-old from Tifton, Georgia, teaches at a nearby school but volunteered his Saturday to help with the event. "It's really positive to see the neighbors getting together and talking," he said.
Mark Peterson, a cycling advocate, came to learn about social networking and to meet up with cyclists from other neighborhoods.
Mark Seigel, right, is a representative from Sunland-Tujunga, what he calls the "bastard stepchild of L.A." He said he had polarized views about the gathering. "The Mayor is very good at lying about statistics," he said. "He talks about how the crime went down in percentages - but what are the actual numbers? There's no clear picture of what's going on."
Stephen Box, left, led two of the 'breakout session' that took place inside City Hall later in the day. His 'Get Connected' sessions focused on driving Web traffic, mastering social network sites and building community in the digital era.
Stephanie, 13, watches her nephew Damien, 1, in the 10th-floor hallway while waiting for her parents to get out of a budget session.
In three blocks, downtown LA is three different worlds. From the aggressive steel angles of the Department of Transportation building on one side to the kitschy markets of Little Tokyo on the other, it's a study in contrasts.
It was noon on a Saturday, but the streets of downtown were largely devoid of people. That is, aside from the stretch of Main street that's lined with wholesale markets, where hundreds of bargain hunters crowd the entryways, picking through bins of discounted teacups and purses.
But like in much of LA, reminders of poverty and economic struggle where everywhere.
This man was leaning on the edge of the public library next to a suitcase and shopping cart full of his belongings. When I asked him if I could take his photo, he licked his hand, straightened his hair, and struck a pose.
The next building over is St. Vibiana's Cathedral. Built in 1876, it's one of the earliest relics of historic downtown but is now used as a performing arts hall. Today, it was the scene of a wedding in the making.
"Who's wedding?" I asked a man who was carting in sound equipment.
"I don't know," he said. "No one special. Rich people."
The florist, Eddie Nomura, said he has nine designers working to set up the 400-person event.
Walking down Second street toward Alameda, I entered the heart of Little Tokyo, one of three official Japantowns in the United States (the other two being in San Jose and San Francisco).
There were Japanese people, of course, but mostly there were people who just wanted to own something Japanese. And there were shopkeepers who were more than willing to indulge them.
Or perhaps, in this time of economic turmoil, they wanted to save money on a trip to Kyoto and just buy a bunch of paper umbrellas that say "happiness" in Kanji instead.
But for those looking for authenticity, it can be found at the Koyasan Buddhist Temple, established in 1914 as the head of the Koyasan Shingon Mission in the U.S.
Or in the Japanese grocery stores, where the shelves were well-stocked with soba noodles and shrimp snacks.
It was noon on a Saturday, but the streets of downtown were largely devoid of people. That is, aside from the stretch of Main street that's lined with wholesale markets, where hundreds of bargain hunters crowd the entryways, picking through bins of discounted teacups and purses.
But like in much of LA, reminders of poverty and economic struggle where everywhere.
This man was leaning on the edge of the public library next to a suitcase and shopping cart full of his belongings. When I asked him if I could take his photo, he licked his hand, straightened his hair, and struck a pose.
The next building over is St. Vibiana's Cathedral. Built in 1876, it's one of the earliest relics of historic downtown but is now used as a performing arts hall. Today, it was the scene of a wedding in the making.
"Who's wedding?" I asked a man who was carting in sound equipment.
"I don't know," he said. "No one special. Rich people."
The florist, Eddie Nomura, said he has nine designers working to set up the 400-person event.
Walking down Second street toward Alameda, I entered the heart of Little Tokyo, one of three official Japantowns in the United States (the other two being in San Jose and San Francisco).
There were Japanese people, of course, but mostly there were people who just wanted to own something Japanese. And there were shopkeepers who were more than willing to indulge them.
Or perhaps, in this time of economic turmoil, they wanted to save money on a trip to Kyoto and just buy a bunch of paper umbrellas that say "happiness" in Kanji instead.
But for those looking for authenticity, it can be found at the Koyasan Buddhist Temple, established in 1914 as the head of the Koyasan Shingon Mission in the U.S.
Or in the Japanese grocery stores, where the shelves were well-stocked with soba noodles and shrimp snacks.
Continue reading Bustle, bridesmaids and boba in Downtown.
For a columnist working at one of the world's most famous newspapers,
every word typed can be self-incriminating, and not even a Pulitzer is
a shield from controversy. Maureen Dowd, never one to shy away from
generalizations and invective, practically invites scrutiny from Catholics,
conservatives and every other demographic she has disparaged in her
column.
Despite all that, she has won the most coveted prize in journalism, penned multiple best-sellers, and her columns are regularly among the "most popular" on the New York Times' Web site. Which just goes to show, on the Internet, you can be brash, as long as you're not boring.
The D.C. native attended Immaculata High School, a private Catholic high school in Washington, and went on to get a B.A. in English from Catholic University.
Afterward, she got a job at the Washington Star through her brother, who hung out at the Connecticut Avenue watering hole Poor Robert's with Star editor Dave Burgin, according to Dowd's interview with the San Francisco Chronicle. Burgin was impressed by her vocabulary and, apparently, typing skills, which were the break-neck speed of 40 words per minute.
She was soon hired as a typist working the 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. shift so that she could keep her day job at a tennis club. She wrote stories in her spare time, and became one of the Star's top metropolitan and sports reporters by the time the paper folded in 1981.
Bob Woodward interviewed her for a job at the Washington Post, but he instead gave it to an Ivy League graduate. He later said it was a mistake to pass her up.
She moved on to Time magazine, where she worked in the Washington Bureau under Howell Raines. In her book "Bushworld: Enter at your own risk," Dowd thanked Raines for "giving me the White House beat to cover the first President Bush and an op-ed column to cover the second."
It's her columns that have made her famous - and infamous.
Though several news sources (and Dowd herself) have described her as a "practicing Catholic",Dowd has been anything but easy on the faith of her Irish forefathers over the years. In a March 20, 2002 column for the Times, Dowd compared the Catholic Church to Al-Qaeda and other "twisted societies" where males weild most of the power.
This prompted a veritable armageddon of reactionary fury from Catholic leaders worldwide, with Catholic League president William Donohue calling Dowd "a radical feminist" who has "long hated the Church."
Then, in an April 26, 2005 column, Dowd disparaged the newly-appointed Pope Benedict XVI, calling him "a Jurassic archconservative who disdains...the revolutionary trends toward diversity and cultural openness since the '60s."
To this, the National Review's "The Corner" blog responded, "What appears to be a Maureen Dowd column this morning is surely a parody of a Maureen Dowd column. I mean, she wouldn't write anything this ridiculous. And if she did, her editors would never publish it." Ouch.
In 1999, Dowd won the Pulitzer Prize for her commentary on the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Though they may have been a bitter drop in a bucket of applause, her win did prompt a some vocal opponents criticizing Dowd's columns as being little more than vitriol fueled by her disdain for conservatism.
The Boston Phoenix's archives still hold the famous brush-off by Dan Kennedy that Dowd's win "smacks of Pulitzer lite."
The Weekly Standard also lampooned her columns by describing their so-called "immutable laws," such as distilling politicians to two-dimensional charicatures rather than offering up deeper analysis.
Even the left-leaning Slate.com said, in a mostly congratulatory piece, that Dowd's "glibness gets in the way of her insight" and that " she appears on occasion to phone in her copy."
Katherine Boo of Washington Monthly accused her of "political nihilism undergirding the carefully chosen words" and, perhaps in a nod to her ostensible Catholicism, New York magazine's Michael Wolff said "she truly seems to have it in for unfaithful men, Hollywood, the media, and all other cornerstones of "trivial and craven and tawdry" morality."
And that's just the liberal media talking.
Fortunately for Dowd, the Internet is an echo chamber that grows louder with each voice, whether it's shouting in praise or in outrage. And her job security seems to rest on her uncanny ability to keep the Internet talking.
As evidence, take a statement made on Don Imus' talk show by George H.W. Bush, father of the "W" whom Dowd regularly depicted as a simian buffoon.
"I've got to make a confession. I kind of like Maureen Dowd," Bush said. "And this kills me with my own family."
Despite all that, she has won the most coveted prize in journalism, penned multiple best-sellers, and her columns are regularly among the "most popular" on the New York Times' Web site. Which just goes to show, on the Internet, you can be brash, as long as you're not boring.
The D.C. native attended Immaculata High School, a private Catholic high school in Washington, and went on to get a B.A. in English from Catholic University.
Afterward, she got a job at the Washington Star through her brother, who hung out at the Connecticut Avenue watering hole Poor Robert's with Star editor Dave Burgin, according to Dowd's interview with the San Francisco Chronicle. Burgin was impressed by her vocabulary and, apparently, typing skills, which were the break-neck speed of 40 words per minute.
She was soon hired as a typist working the 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. shift so that she could keep her day job at a tennis club. She wrote stories in her spare time, and became one of the Star's top metropolitan and sports reporters by the time the paper folded in 1981.
Bob Woodward interviewed her for a job at the Washington Post, but he instead gave it to an Ivy League graduate. He later said it was a mistake to pass her up.
She moved on to Time magazine, where she worked in the Washington Bureau under Howell Raines. In her book "Bushworld: Enter at your own risk," Dowd thanked Raines for "giving me the White House beat to cover the first President Bush and an op-ed column to cover the second."
It's her columns that have made her famous - and infamous.
Though several news sources (and Dowd herself) have described her as a "practicing Catholic",Dowd has been anything but easy on the faith of her Irish forefathers over the years. In a March 20, 2002 column for the Times, Dowd compared the Catholic Church to Al-Qaeda and other "twisted societies" where males weild most of the power.
This prompted a veritable armageddon of reactionary fury from Catholic leaders worldwide, with Catholic League president William Donohue calling Dowd "a radical feminist" who has "long hated the Church."
Then, in an April 26, 2005 column, Dowd disparaged the newly-appointed Pope Benedict XVI, calling him "a Jurassic archconservative who disdains...the revolutionary trends toward diversity and cultural openness since the '60s."
To this, the National Review's "The Corner" blog responded, "What appears to be a Maureen Dowd column this morning is surely a parody of a Maureen Dowd column. I mean, she wouldn't write anything this ridiculous. And if she did, her editors would never publish it." Ouch.
In 1999, Dowd won the Pulitzer Prize for her commentary on the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Though they may have been a bitter drop in a bucket of applause, her win did prompt a some vocal opponents criticizing Dowd's columns as being little more than vitriol fueled by her disdain for conservatism.
The Boston Phoenix's archives still hold the famous brush-off by Dan Kennedy that Dowd's win "smacks of Pulitzer lite."
The Weekly Standard also lampooned her columns by describing their so-called "immutable laws," such as distilling politicians to two-dimensional charicatures rather than offering up deeper analysis.
Even the left-leaning Slate.com said, in a mostly congratulatory piece, that Dowd's "glibness gets in the way of her insight" and that " she appears on occasion to phone in her copy."
Katherine Boo of Washington Monthly accused her of "political nihilism undergirding the carefully chosen words" and, perhaps in a nod to her ostensible Catholicism, New York magazine's Michael Wolff said "she truly seems to have it in for unfaithful men, Hollywood, the media, and all other cornerstones of "trivial and craven and tawdry" morality."
And that's just the liberal media talking.
Fortunately for Dowd, the Internet is an echo chamber that grows louder with each voice, whether it's shouting in praise or in outrage. And her job security seems to rest on her uncanny ability to keep the Internet talking.
As evidence, take a statement made on Don Imus' talk show by George H.W. Bush, father of the "W" whom Dowd regularly depicted as a simian buffoon.
"I've got to make a confession. I kind of like Maureen Dowd," Bush said. "And this kills me with my own family."
In the Twitterverse, as in the blogosphere, shorter wins. Populated by
fewer characters, tiny urls, and abbreviated words, the Twitterverse operates on one law: less is more. Except when it comes to health coverage.
When President Obama told Americans to offer up suggestions for healthcare reform, Twitterers obliged. Journalists, parents, doctors and wonks gathered under the hashtag "#healthreform," sending out useful links, personal ideas and re-tweets. Taken altogether, the list breaks from the cacaphony of the larger Web to form somewhat of a "best-of" list created by people who know, or at least care, about healthcare reform more than the average Joe (Wilson).
In the Twitterverse, everyone can hear you scream. So when a study surfaces with a splashy headline, like "Uninsured more likely to die," it gets re-tweeted again and again. Beyond that, the links range from the mainstream to the obscure.
Train more doctors, said @marionthorpe. Tori Sanchez, writing from Texas with the proud statement "Im [sic] going to use Twitter to talk about how much I love our capitalist country. Please don't follow me if you don't like what I say," suggested, in a throwback to mid-90s Saturday Night Live, more cowbell.
Anthony Wright tweets under @healthaccess for Health Access California, a nonprofit healthcare consumer advocacy organization. His account is especially prolific, updating 5-10 times per day. Though some of his updates are links to news sources like Time magazine, his political slant is evident through his links to Nancy Pelosi's blog and stories of healthcare nightmares...from the SEIU.
Not exactly an objective source, but he does give voice to organizations that would otherwise have trouble breaking through to an audience outside their immediate supporters. To balance him out, there's people like glaucoma specialist robschertzer, who posted two Wall Street Journal articles: One arguing that middle-class Americans are overburdened by mandated coverage, the other detailing Sen. Max Baucus' proposed plan. Robschertzer offered up a one-line summary: "nonprofit cooperatives to cover uninsured?" as though somewhat incredulous.
Or maybe he was just confused. So are up to 92 percent of the members of Congress, according to a link shared by @JennaRas, a healthcare marketer and advocate.
That's pretty scary stuff. But not as scary as tweets linking to articles claiming that Obama plans to legalize illegal immigrants in order to provide them with health care (the nerve!) or an Investors Business Daily piece claiming that 45 percent of doctors would quit their jobs if healthcare reform was to pass.
A bit less civil and a bit more snarky are the other healthcare hashtag offshoots, like #hcr. It's essentially a sounding board for liberal supporters of Obama's plan, with tweets like "U.S.1st in health care spending, 37th in health" and "When Jesus healed the sick, how much was the co-pay?" (That one's filed under #christian, too). And since Baucus' proposal hit the table, there have been a flurry of #BadBaucusAmendments, #BestBaucusAmendments and just plain #StupidBaucusAmendments.
Dig a little deeper, and you'll find #deathpanels, which hurls attacks at everyone from Obama to insurance companies to Jimmy Carter to Joe Wilson - everyone, it seems, but the meme's author.
And with that, the twitter debate has spiraled from an earnest search for solutions to a paralysis of indecision to unbridled ad-hominem attacks. Tweets imitate life, it seems, and the healthcare debate.
When President Obama told Americans to offer up suggestions for healthcare reform, Twitterers obliged. Journalists, parents, doctors and wonks gathered under the hashtag "#healthreform," sending out useful links, personal ideas and re-tweets. Taken altogether, the list breaks from the cacaphony of the larger Web to form somewhat of a "best-of" list created by people who know, or at least care, about healthcare reform more than the average Joe (Wilson).
In the Twitterverse, everyone can hear you scream. So when a study surfaces with a splashy headline, like "Uninsured more likely to die," it gets re-tweeted again and again. Beyond that, the links range from the mainstream to the obscure.
Train more doctors, said @marionthorpe. Tori Sanchez, writing from Texas with the proud statement "Im [sic] going to use Twitter to talk about how much I love our capitalist country. Please don't follow me if you don't like what I say," suggested, in a throwback to mid-90s Saturday Night Live, more cowbell.
Anthony Wright tweets under @healthaccess for Health Access California, a nonprofit healthcare consumer advocacy organization. His account is especially prolific, updating 5-10 times per day. Though some of his updates are links to news sources like Time magazine, his political slant is evident through his links to Nancy Pelosi's blog and stories of healthcare nightmares...from the SEIU.
Not exactly an objective source, but he does give voice to organizations that would otherwise have trouble breaking through to an audience outside their immediate supporters. To balance him out, there's people like glaucoma specialist robschertzer, who posted two Wall Street Journal articles: One arguing that middle-class Americans are overburdened by mandated coverage, the other detailing Sen. Max Baucus' proposed plan. Robschertzer offered up a one-line summary: "nonprofit cooperatives to cover uninsured?" as though somewhat incredulous.
Or maybe he was just confused. So are up to 92 percent of the members of Congress, according to a link shared by @JennaRas, a healthcare marketer and advocate.
That's pretty scary stuff. But not as scary as tweets linking to articles claiming that Obama plans to legalize illegal immigrants in order to provide them with health care (the nerve!) or an Investors Business Daily piece claiming that 45 percent of doctors would quit their jobs if healthcare reform was to pass.
A bit less civil and a bit more snarky are the other healthcare hashtag offshoots, like #hcr. It's essentially a sounding board for liberal supporters of Obama's plan, with tweets like "U.S.1st in health care spending, 37th in health" and "When Jesus healed the sick, how much was the co-pay?" (That one's filed under #christian, too). And since Baucus' proposal hit the table, there have been a flurry of #BadBaucusAmendments, #BestBaucusAmendments and just plain #StupidBaucusAmendments.
Dig a little deeper, and you'll find #deathpanels, which hurls attacks at everyone from Obama to insurance companies to Jimmy Carter to Joe Wilson - everyone, it seems, but the meme's author.
And with that, the twitter debate has spiraled from an earnest search for solutions to a paralysis of indecision to unbridled ad-hominem attacks. Tweets imitate life, it seems, and the healthcare debate.
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