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Fear Factor

By Anne Taylor Fleming — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 16:38:00 GMT

Illustration by Gracia Lam

What is it about L.A. and its police force? We know it’s not the goon squad of decades past, but the sight of the black uniforms and dark sunglasses sets off quivers. So when a nurse, someone like you and me, gets pulled over for using her cell phone and is then slammed to the ground for ignoring orders to return to her car, our fears kick into high gear. Not again, I thought, as I forced myself to look at the images of a battered Michelle Jordan that were played over and over. Two other incidents—one involving a hapless skateboarder—occurred around the same time, more examples of what appeared to be out-of-control people in uniform. ¶ Surely this couldn’t be happening. The police had been working overtime to repair themselves in real, not just cosmetic, ways. The change in the cops and how they operated in this multicultural sprawl was one of the

heartening stories of the past ten years. So the weird thing was how fast my suspicions—and those of my friends—were triggered. We agreed that no matter how much we had read about the transformation of law enforcement, we remained queasy, uncertain that the metamorphosis was genuine and that the LAPD had cleaned up its act. It’s as if we all have a Rodney King trip wire. We see the images of those in uniform committing what are clearly abusive acts, and we are jolted back to the old paradigm: the police as an occupying army in a vast, complicated city. The baton cracks and whoosh!—we suffer the flashback in unison, a collective case of post-traumatic stress disorder.

These feelings run deep for many Angelenos. They go back at least to the Watts riots in 1965, when police brutality was the spark. Even as a white girl growing up on the Westside, I was afraid of the police. They were the swaggering guys with the reflective sunglasses patrolling the streets like an Old West posse, especially the ones who roared around on motorcycles, machismo incarnate. They were scary, and they seemed to like it that way. A high-ranking officer I know, who served the city from 1969 to 2007, says that on the first day of his training the young recruits were told that they were about to enter a war zone, where a lot of people wanted to kill them. They lived in a state of arrogant paranoia. The message, he says, was to watch your back every second. You certainly didn’t want a stranger—even a harmless-looking one—coming up to you.

I remember the first time I was in New York City and saw these slouchy, friendly-looking street corner cops. I was astonished to see people talking to them and laughing with them, even touching them as they shared a joke. I had never witnessed such scenes. They were a revelation. Of course that city had—and has—a far larger force (34,000 compared with our 13,000), much of it on foot. The guys I watched on that visit and on subsequent trips were approachable, with their comfortable paunches—not the intimidating, ramrod-straight brigades of my hometown. The NYPD has had its own ugly incidents of police corruption and abuse along the way, but the atmosphere on the ground is so different. Those officers seem to be of their city, not sitting on top of it—or peering at it through the windows of a patrol car, keeping their distance.

/ / / /

In 1991, the lid finally blew. You could say that Rodney King, by taking those horrible blows, did us all a service, and no one, including the powers that be, could look away anymore. A fancy commission was formed and changes were promised, but somehow improvements seemed to stall. Many of us still had a knot in our stomachs when dealing with the police. Then came the scandal in the Rampart Division a few years later—at least 70 officers found guilty of unprovoked beatings and shootings, perjury, and planting evidence. In the wake of that tumult the LAPD was forced to enter into a federal consent decree with the Justice Department—in effect having Big Brother watch its every move—and that humiliation, according to my LAPD friend, made the organization begin to change its ways.

Like a lot of people, I watched skeptically from a distance. Was it really possible to alter a long-entrenched culture? Bit by bit I began to believe, to let down my guard, to not be spooked every time a patrol car passed, to not have sweaty palms when I got pulled over for a questionable traffic move. The temperature of the town went down; people started to exhale. You could hear it and feel it. Then Bill Bratton came riding in from a triumphant tenure as head of the NYPD, and he worked L.A. and the media like a celebrity pro, helping to banish lingering doubts, even on the toughest streets. We had a new police force; that’s what he told us. Officers were to be respectful, part of the community. They were to holster their swagger.

By that point many of us had logged our own personal experiences—reassuring ones at that. One night my mother was mugged in the parking lot of her favorite market. She had been shopping, no doubt whistling—as was her wont—while carrying her groceries to the car. A couple of young men knocked her down and grabbed her purse. She was in her seventies then. When I got to her, she was sitting in a chair, her beautiful face bruised from the fall, with two officers beside her. They were gentle without being patronizing. They took her information and insisted on following us home. They stayed for some time to calm my mom down and told her to change the locks and all her credit cards and that they would keep a sharp eye on her house. We were both grateful—and, I have to admit, stunned by their kindness. One of the officers was female. I don’t know if that made a difference, but in general the diversity of the force is among the ameliorating shifts. There are now 3,778 women in the force, while Latinos make up 41 percent, up from 33 percent in 1999. In short, we are not being policed by a bunch of Marlboro Men anymore. Let’s not forget: Crime is way down, too.

Yes, there is ongoing racial profiling, people being stopped because of the color of their skin. On my side of town there was a notorious motorcycle cop, a white 15-year veteran who routinely pulled over Latinos in their trucks—gardeners and day workers. I often saw him writing tickets. Earlier this year he was finally disciplined. In South L.A. it can be just the reverse, a young Latino friend told me. He says that the older white cops are more relaxed and confident, whereas the young black and Latino officers tend to be more throwback macho, as if they have something to prove. There is also the theory that the younger cadets have been raised in a high-tech era of computer communications and thus have lost the interpersonal skills of talking people down; tensions escalate quickly and violence can result.

The new chief, Charlie Beck, did everything right when the recent disturbing videos surfaced. He wasn’t defensive, and he didn’t make excuses. He called for investigations and community meetings. He is old-school LAPD—a 35-year vet—and new school as well. People like him and trust him. There is something comforting in his demeanor when you see him speak and in the informality of his very name: Charlie. He seems accessible like those cops I saw—and still see—in Manhattan. Admittedly this is not an easy city to handle. I don’t know anyone who is reflexively antipolice anymore. Most of us have a keen sense of the formidable job we’re asking them to do. But when those violent images appear, our nerve endings go on alert. Given the city’s history, that will no doubt be true for a very long time.

Dark Shadows

By Anne Taylor Fleming — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 16:38:00 GMT

Illustration by Gracia lam

Here we are in college football season. I always look forward to the start-up, the suddenly packed stadiums, the cheerleaders in their emblazoned, chest-hugging sweaters, the tailgate parties—and inevitably too much booze. It is all so retro, so American. Even in L.A., where we don’t have a dramatic shift in the weather and where the fans don’t have to be seriously bundled up, there is anticipation. The city focuses on our two big old venues, the Rose Bowl and the Coliseum, home to UCLA and USC, respectively. Both built in the early 1920s, they are a piece of our history, never more than when they’re filled with roaring crowds, the autumn skies a golden blue. All that gets to me, as does the prowess of the young and gifted running back who snakes through crowds of behemoths or the occasional quarterback with the powerful arm, the guys you know are destined for the pros.

Now the scene comes once again to life (it could be a musical, something on a Broadway stage). But this year the sport seems to have a nasty undertow, a sadness that mars the normal pleasure. It is hard to summon the usual feeling, to register the old thrill as the teams stream onto the field in all their adrenalized cockiness.

The problem is one cannot help thinking about what went on in the locker room shower at Penn State University. That large, paunchy guy raping a young boy, the “skin-on-skin smacking sound” their bodies made, as the incident was described by the man who saw and heard it in 2001. The scene is impossible to expunge from the mind’s eye. It overlays the on-field hoopla. The images jostle one another just like the players on the field. The sounds, too, are jumbled: rah, rah, smack, smack.

The molester, of course, is the now-jailed Jerry Sandusky, former defensive coordinator of the country’s most successful college football program. This wasn’t just a team but a revered, triumphant, money-raising institution. The witness was graduate assistant Mike McQueary. When he reported what he had witnessed to his superiors, they did nothing. Sandusky kept his job and kept on molesting young boys, at least ten—abuse that took place from 1998 until 2011, when the sick, collusive mess became public.

I am a child of Penn State. No, I didn’t study there. My father did, and he loved it with the fervor of the football-crazy alum that he was. I spent fall weekends watching his team on television. Those were good times. My British stepmother would put out a buffet of her mustard eggs or bangers and mash, depending on the weather, as we huddled around the set. Friends would come, other alumni like Julius Epstein—half of the famous Epstein brothers writing team that gave us the movie Casablanca—a twinkly pixie of a man who was, while less voluble, as die-hard a fan as my dad. Sometimes the two of them would travel together to Pennsylvania to watch a game in person, trips that left them ebullient if the Nittany Lions won or deflated if they did not. My papa had a pendant in his office and a photo of himself with Joe Paterno.

Ah yes, the famous-turned-infamous JoePa. My father adored him. They had met on a number of occasions, my actor dad being a somewhat well-known grad. He proudly told me of the coach’s high standards, how he nurtured his players, made sure they studied. There had never been a leader of young men as upstanding, as determined, as admirable. My father was not alone in his affections, which were almost filial, as if the younger Paterno were, in fact, his “Pa,” too. It looked to me as if the whole world of men had a crush on this fellow with the heavy-framed glasses and the winning ways, that kind of male animal-pack idolatry that often attends athletic heroes and those who lead them to victory. It is thick, sentimental stuff, the flames fanned by equally smitten sportswriters and game announcers.

Then came the reckoning, the Shakespearean fall. The dethroning seemed to happen in an instant, but the thing that would bring him down had been going on for years. What we learned is that JoePa knew as far back as 1998 that Sandusky was into little boys, every awful pun intended.

/ / / /

Their schools, like our own USC, have had major scandals, but these involved violations like players accepting gifts. What occurred at Penn State is in another moral universe. The closest analogy is the Roman Catholic Church, which has—in diocese after diocese, state after state, country after country—hidden its pedophiliac priests, moving them around like chess pieces to do harm again. That was true in L.A., where retired Archbishop Roger Mahony, respected for his solidarity with Cesar Chavez and the farmworkers, harbored his fair share of child molesters; estimates range from 19 to 247. In 2007, Mahony and the Archdiocese of Los Angeles apologized for abuses by priests and paid $660 million to more than 500 alleged victims. Nationwide, billions have been spent in settlements with victims (similar suits are beginning to be filed against Penn State, and their number is expected to be monumental). Yet only this past summer in Philadelphia was the first senior church official in the United States, Monsignor William J. Lynn, convicted of covering up abuses by priests under his supervision. “You knew full well what was right, Monsignor Lynn,” the judge said on sentencing him to three to six years, “but you chose wrong.”

How crisp and clean that sounds—how obvious—and how long in coming. One has to wonder what was going through Joe Paterno’s mind. Was he haunted by what he was hiding? When he saw Sandusky up close, did he experience an internal twitch, a flicker of repugnance—or fear, knowing that this would all be discovered at some point? Or was he too much a victim of his own mythology to allow himself to picture, just once, the smack-smack of bodies in that locker room? Did he think the triumph of the young men under his tutelage could balance out all the horrible things being done to other younger men by someone under his protection? What kind of calculation was he making?

Joe Paterno lived long enough for the tide to turn, but he wasn’t around to see the punishments meted out to his cherished program, to see his team stripped of its 112 victories scored between 1998 and 2011, the molestation years. And he wasn’t around to see his statue taken down. I looked at that footage, the men wheeling the sculpture away, and for a moment I was glad my father wasn’t here. But then I thought, No, he needed to bear witness. Joe Paterno had failed the ultimate test of character: He had protected his players while sacrificing others. I wanted my father to acknowledge this. It was his sorrow and outrage I needed to hear. My dad had made major strides in dealing with and understanding topics—like pedophilia—that had rarely been talked about during his prime. He would have hated what happened to his hallowed coach, but he would have been deeply offended by what that man had permitted.

I have Catholic friends who have had to forgive their church in order to continue embracing their faith. They don’t make apologies—never that. But they keep attending weekly Mass because it is the sustenance in their lives. Viewing a football game is hardly of the same magnitude, but the ritual brought joy to my father’s life; it reconnected him to happy days on that giant campus, to his own beginnings. The years ahead will be tough around there. Those lawsuits will pile up. There will be ugliness exposed in detail as an entire institution is brought to account again and again. Penn State will continue to be in the news for a very long time—and not in a good way.

Nonetheless, if my pop were here, I think he would still want to watch “his” team in action. He wasn’t a bailer. He wouldn’t have abandoned the Nittany Lions, even in their much diminished form. Penn State was his school; it would always be his school. And I probably would watch with him.

Slippery Slope

Anne Taylor Fleming — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 16:39:00 GMT

Illustration by Gracia Lam

To: The Edge Re: Your planned Malibu compound

After reading about your troubles trying to build in the mountains of Malibu, I decided I needed to go up there, to the Sweetwater Mesa Ridgeline, and have a look for myself. I had passed by many times while driving along PCH or taking an out-of-towner to the Malibu Lagoon, but I had never been to see where you want to put five houses. Of course, as a native daughter and one who feels protective of those coastal hills, I have been intently following the dispute for the past few years, and let me say, it could not have been much fun for you. The media are only too happy to celebrate the difficulties of the rich and famous. We in L.A. love nothing better than when a celebrity gets in hot water or doesn’t get his or her way. It’s an equalizing kind of thing, the not-very-attractive flip side of our usual genuflection before the stars in our midst. For you this contretemps has been happening in tandem with the complicated successful failure (not an oxymoron in this case) of Spider-Man on Broadway, another of your pet projects. It must have seemed as if Mercury were in retrograde or some such.

I suppose your idea for an ocean-view compound sounded wondrous and doable. You bought 156 acres for the relatively modest sum of $9 million and then had architects and engineers draw up plans to erect an environmentally hip and sensitive enclave—the greenest of the green. The home you envisioned building for yourself came with the lyrical name “Leaves in the Wind,” and it looked like a floating dreamscape à la Frank Gehry. It was to be 12,785 square feet, not gargantuan like some of the stuff we’ve become accustomed to in Los Angeles, but certainly large, and it was to perch along a ridge overlooking the shoreline and ocean. The place appeared dangerous and daring and magical, hinged to a promontory.

It was also, according to the California Coastal Commission, a nonstarter—not the house itself but its location. The commission turned you down. But you didn’t back off. You hired lawyers and lobbyists. You entered into an agreement to give $1 million to the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy that would go toward building a major new hiking trail that would cross your property (which, by the way, I would love, being an avid hiker). I don’t regard any of this as bribery, a charge I have heard from others. This is how the game gets played, certainly in Southern California. I understand that, even if I don’t always think it’s jake when those with money play with a fuller deck or have an unfair advantage. But why enunciate the obvious?

Alas, it doesn’t seem as if your campaign is going to work—not without modifications. All you have to do is stand on that wild land to know that. A friend who is conversant with the project took me on a tour in his four-wheel-drive truck. We entered through Serra Road, drove by the little guard tower and then up about three-quarters of a mile. No question, your acres are stunning, moving, thrilling, raw, full of native grasses and wildflowers as well as bobcats, California quail, and other creatures (their habitats are of ongoing concern for the naysayers). Your intended home on that front ledge is crazy vertiginous, though I can surely see how you wanted your “Leaves in the Wind” to in effect rustle above the sea. The problem is, the commission frowns on such placement and on edifices that are prominently viewable from below. It makes no bones about it. From its perspective, that kind of king-of-the-hill visibility is flat-out undesirable, a thumb in the public eye. The other proposed homes in your project are also on ridgelines rather than tucked away. The contention from your side is that these are the only possible locations, but standing there I found that hard to believe (as do people far more knowledgeable than I).

There is also the one-mile road you would need to build to connect the structures; that would be an engineering feat on its own, particularly when it comes to the last three plots at the top of the property. We crawled along that final spit of road—about a 20 percent grade—as it climbed and twisted. I felt as if I were on an amusement park ride, no less scary for our slow speed. I didn’t look down. I can’t imagine wanting to live up there, not to mention navigate the comings and goings—even when dead sober. After a beer or two, watch out. And what about the fire trucks? You cannot help but think about them because this is prime burn turf, especially when the wicked Santa Anas do their thing. You have asked to install a 7,800-foot water line that would crest the Santa Monica Mountains. The commission said forget about it because of the adverse impact. Yet you are still in there fighting.

/ / / /

I have never been in a position like yours. I suppose it’s maddening. I know people who have tangled with the coastal commission and been enraged, including liberal eco-types who simply wish to modify a waterside dwelling. They say the commission can be a pain in the—well, you know, a sentiment you no doubt share by now. But I truly believe that most of us in this state are grateful for its work because it stands between us and all manner of unsightly development. Maybe in Ireland, where you grew up, it’s too cold and forbidding along much of that country’s shoreline for people to think of settling there. But from top to bottom, the California coast, heart-stoppingly beautiful and blessed with a temperate climate, is ever alluring to builders. You are just one guy with a stubborn dream about where you want to plunk down hearth and home and raise your kids. You bought a piece of property and, by God, this is America, you should be allowed to build something you want (after jumping through the requisite hoops, and I’m sure you feel you have done plenty of jumping).

I don’t think you are a bad guy. Far from it. After all, you are mates with Bono, who is actively engaged in trying to make the world a better place. According to everything I read, you, too, are a thoughtful man with good values, someone who has supported organizations such as Amnesty International and the New York Food Bank. After Katrina, you cofounded the charity Music Rising to replace instruments that had been lost in the hurricane. That’s bighearted stuff. Some people are bewildered by what strikes them as a disconnect between your philanthropic self and the person who wants to nest on a delicate and contested piece of earth. Yes, you own it and have every right to build on it, especially in the admirably green way you intend. But we don’t want to look up and see you there. We don’t want to see reflecting glass in the bright day or shining lights at night (and no street lamps along the road, please). We at least want to have the illusion that there’s some wild and sacred ground left—because that puts us in touch with our better, more careful, and custodial selves.

So isn’t there a way you can scale back, get these houses down out of sight—and perhaps cancel those three high up in the sky? Can’t you just wander your gorgeous grounds by yourself and figure out how to change things up a bit? Otherwise we face being locked in an ongoing fight that will cost not only you big bucks but the rest of us taxpayers, who will continue to help foot the coastal commission’s legal bills. Then instead of being a symbol of intransigence and, dare I say it, arrogance, you could turn back into a true guitar hero.

—A Concerned Citizen

Summer Fling

By Anne Taylor Fleming — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 17:18:00 GMT

Illustration by Gracia Lam

There is no season I embrace more than summer, specifically the height of it: the month of August. I love the very word and everything that’s implied, the long, hot days and warmish nights. Year after year I cannot wait for this stretch, and then I hold onto it with every fiber of my being, counting the days until “real life” begins again. By that point I am waterlogged from swimming in our pool and too tan for my own good despite the basket of sun protection that sits outside the back door. I become a little haphazard about slathering on the screen creams and stop hearing the dermatologists’ admonitions. I let go. In fairness to June and July—they are fine. They have a vacation aura. But nothing like August, often our hottest and clearest month, with scant chance of fog. The gray marine layer that can be so dense in the first weeks of summer, notably for those of us living nearest the ocean, can drive us mad. By August it is blissfully gone.

This is the one time of year L.A. seems to calm down, take a deep breath, and turn back into a beach town. The casual, sandy soul of the place starts to reemerge as our intense, ambition-ridden city suddenly shifts into a kind of resort. The basin empties out, at least somewhat. Am I imagining it, or are people actually nicer—or maybe not in such a hurry? I do things I wouldn’t ordinarily try. Just because I can, I drive around the freeways at night with the windows open and the music playing and the lights twinkling. Where is everybody? I gleefully ask myself. Could it not always be so? Even on an afternoon—not during hard-core rush hours; one would still be advised to avoid those—I can feel frisky and visit a friend in the Valley, a journey from the Westside I would be insane to attempt otherwise. I agree to meet a pal for a late supper in Venice or West Hollywood, preferably someplace with a patio so we can be outside. We arrive in our flip-flops, summer skirts, and T-shirts. We eat grilled fish and drink cold rosé (a wine I usually never touch) from Provence or flutes of prosecco. A languid sexiness is in the air. I feel as if I am in the south of France or a town in Italy.

There appears to be a general absence of tension. The movie industry, which always produces a hustling buzz, is quieter. My actor friends don’t stress as much. They, too, capitulate to the August rhythms so that the competitive L.A. of the other 11 months is not as palpable. The aching longing to get that part or sell that script feels less paramount on a lovely night out with friends.

/ / / /

Mostly, though, my preference is to be at home, where I am surrounded by the aromatic bounty of my garden, the front arbor heavy with jasmine, the rosemary outside the back gate, the lemon tree. We keep a jar filled with lemon juice to add to iced tea or make an Arnold Palmer or use in a marinade for chicken. If someone calls, no matter how late in the day, I say, “Come by and I’ll feed you. Bring the dog for a swim.” My cupboards are full of ingredients for quick alfresco dinners: cartons of linguini fini, cans of tuna in olive oil, jars of Niçoise olives. I stock fresh tomatoes and delicate greens and now, in observance of culinary trends, boxes of farro or quinoa. There is always cream in the refrigerator—to whip for berries or spread in a glass bowl with alternating layers of blood orange sorbet—and a selection of blue cheeses, from the most benign to the smelliest. The tallest shelf holds bottles of chilled white wines from Italy and France and Australia—and, yes, prosecco. I clip jasmine sprigs and stick them in a jar on the table. We eat by pool light and candlelight as the birds sign off. We might take to the chaises with blankets and watch the stars as the kids or pups enjoy a final dip.

No question, I am partial to the particular domesticity that comes with the season, the informality and spontaneity of the get-togethers, even the endless trail of towels to be washed and dried, especially if we have friends or family staying, bedded down everywhere. Our house is small; somebody usually ends up on an inflatable mattress, though we have converted the garage into a sleeping pavilion with a fold-out queen sofa. At night with all the doors and windows open, it is a magical space much fought over by visitors. The lucky occupants simply pop into the adjacent hot tub in lieu of joining the inevitably long line to get a turn in our one indoor shower.

Often the first up in the morning, I pick my way around bodies as I gather up laundry, a washrag, a pair of shorts. The last glass of bubbly water or tumbler of wine has left a damp circle on a favorite wood table. I don’t blink. In other months, in other frames of mind, I might be distressed. But this is something else. We are in a different zone. I boil water for coffee, put out juice, and pick apples from the tree in the backyard. A variety called Beverly Hills, they are almost over for the year, the fruit small, a tad tart and not terrifically flavorful, but oh my, here they are just like the lemons, hanging right within reach in my yard in my huge city. I never get over that. I peel and cut them into a generous dice, sauté the pieces in butter and dark brown muscovado sugar, and tuck them into thin pancakes.

Often I don’t read the morning paper, a lifetime habit. The news can wait; the world can wait. I don’t get snared by the titillating headlines that appear on my laptop when I check e-mail. Instead I read cookbooks, dreamy ones with pictures you can practically taste, and novels, not the so-called beach reads, which don’t work for me. My theory is that this isn’t the moment for fluff but precisely the reverse: It’s the time to have at the serious stuff. I have usually saved something new and major to tackle, like Richard Ford’s latest, Canada, which is breathtaking. Now, with the weeks left in my favorite month, I intend to go back and reread his earlier works to trace the arc of his artistry. I am similarly revisiting Hemingway because I recently read a splendid nonfiction work about him, Hemingway’s Boat, one of the books—along with Ford’s—that I have recommended to all my friends for their summer reading lists. I have another literary project under way, memorizing poems I have loved—from Auden and Roethke—so that I can carry the lines around with me. That is good use of my afternoons and no doubt of my brain, though I confess I occasionally doze off. I am grateful my Kindle has a snooze mode.

Used to be I would read with envy stories in magazines about summer outings. Those lavishly described and photographed escapes were always on famous islands or in seaside towns where the chic and well-off (let’s be honest, they were certainly that) would seek a four-week-long refuge from their stress-filled urban lives. Their Augusts seemed so romantic, so sensual, so humid, so—if you will—un-L.A. I wanted to be part of that picnicking pack until I realized I could make a more felicitous country idyll at my own cottage (in a far better climate). Many of my friends have discovered the same thing. Like me, they bring in the supplies—the food and books—and stay put, thrilled not to be vacationing somewhere else when they have the best of it right here.

Venus Rising

By Anne Taylor Fleming — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 18:07:00 GMT

Illustration by Gracia Lam

If you want to have a lively, occasionally combative conversation, just mention the HBO series Girls to a group of women. Even as the show arrives at a summer pause—plenty of time for you to download the first ten episodes and get caught up before the second season begins—my friends and I are still arguing about it. I cannot remember another TV show that has hit such a collective female nerve. The story revolves around four twentysomethings in their first postcollege years in New York City. The ensemble piece has galvanized debates about what it means to be a young woman circa 2012 and how far we have come—and not come.

I have been right in the mix. I hated the first episode. I was appalled, offended, troubled. Here were four smart
women residing in Manhattan, and they were a self-abasing

mess. Hannah, played by the show’s creator and writer, Lena Dunham, had the hots for a bit of narcissistic nastiness who turned her on and turned her over for a session of faceless sex—this after she had just lost her job and gone to his ratty apartment for a little comfort. “Let’s play the quiet game,” he said, trying to shut her up after a quick trip to the bathroom to get some lubricant.

I winced. No, I railed—at the TV and then with my friends, who phoned in immediately after the show. Primed by wild praise from the critics, we had all tuned in and were all maddened and saddened by what we had seen. Is this what girls are like? Is this what they will put up with? Similar huffing and hand-wringing commenced online. I read the posts, nodding my head in agreement. Then I reassured myself: Dunham was clearly just a hip artiste intent on pushing buttons, doing what she had to do to get noticed in this noisy, often vulgar world. No way was her onscreen coterie representative of today’s young women. I didn’t want to see these fumblingly insecure victims HBO was featuring every Sunday night. I swore I would never tune in again.

But I couldn’t stay away. Everywhere I went, people were dissecting the characters. I was even hearing from men; the 35-year-old son of a close friend in the Beltway weighed in. He told me he liked the show because the characters were not only flawed but honest about their appetites. And as the father of daughters, he liked that it wasn’t a pop culture fairy tale about girls being princesses. So I kept watching, and the program began to grow on me. I stopped being irritated and started to be moved by the women’s plight and pluck as they navigated a liberated sexual terrain in which anything can happen.

The series appears at a time when women writers are increasingly pushing boundaries on TV and in film. Think of 2 Broke Girls and Bridesmaids, the latter written by Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo and coproduced by Judd Apatow, who is helping females catch up with males in the raunch department. No surprise that he is an executive producer of Girls. But there is something new in this show, a kind of vulnerable, reflective voice that accompanies the explicitness. Yes, the girls are expected to have sex and expect to have it, no seduction necessary—but that doesn’t make things easier. With hookups come heartbreaks, not to mention STDs and unwanted pregnancies, and Dunham gets the tone just right, including the touching and unsavory scenes into which she puts her own chubby, naked self. See, this is what a real girl looks like.

24-year-old Hollywood writer I know calls Girls the “humor of humiliation.” She finds the show smart and ruefully funny—females laughing at themselves and what they are willing to tolerate while seeking solace in their confess-all friendships. It’s hard to imagine L.A.’s young women, who appear to me less overtly intense, having the same insecurities and misadventures as Dunham’s Manhattan polyglot pack. But when you scrape the surface with a sampling of L.A.’s “girls,” you tend to find similar uncertainties—the worries over those intractable pounds, over what lies ahead, over ever finding happiness. It’s not just the hypersexed territory they have to negotiate. It’s the lousy economic times. Here they are with their college degrees and dreams of success, and they can’t land an unpaid internship or a job at Starbucks. They slide back onto the parental dole (if they got off in the first place), which causes all manner of friction. These are the most overparented kids in history—pampered and adored throughout long, tethered childhoods. They are like little birds pushed from the nest into an unwelcoming place, and Mommy and Daddy have helicoptered away.

In one episode Dunham’s character takes a trip home to the Midwest to ask her still-doting parents for rent money, then slinks back to New York empty-handed. More humiliation. But she is droll about it—not in that perky, one-liner sitcom way but in a thoughtful, self-mocking mode. She carries a full measure of shame around with her because she talks too much and eats too much and wants too much.

A quality that my young Angeleno friends admire is Dunham’s fearlessness as both an actress and a writer, many of them hoping to make their own mark in showbiz. They see her triumph as a cause for admiration—and envy. Dunham managed to write something from the gut and, even more astonishing, get it up and running. She is a role model. I now understand that totally. I have started watching episodes again to see what I missed: the quirks, the silences, the artistry, and strangest of all, the tenderness that starts to creep in and that I didn’t notice at first. Lo and behold, the cad turns into a sentimental boyfriend. Who knew?

These women also sympathize with how Dunham seethes with jealousy when old friends begin to make it. They, too, are the spawn of the celebrity culture, longing for their 15 minutes in the public eye—or maybe just 5. I remember discussing the death of seven-year-old pilot Jessica Dubroff, who in 1996 crashed while attempting to become the youngest person to fly across the United States, with a neighbor in her preteens. I told her how terrible I thought the whole stunt was and how sad. But she’s famous, she said to me; she’s on the cover of People. She’s also dead, I added.

I am always so hopeful for young women trying to put their lives together. When I started viewing the show, I was horrified—certainly on behalf of this gang. I wanted to shake them hard and protect them at the same time. But the girls don’t need any protection. They’ve got one another and a shared cockeyed optimism that things will work out as they trudge the gritty streets of their often overwhelming metropolis. How different it looks from the world of Carrie Bradshaw and her pals. That was another universe, a part of a superacquisitive, bygone era. All those clothes and all those shoes. Seems absurd looking back—even a little obscene.

These women are a more real bunch. They quip and squabble and, yes, whine. Some critics have accused the show of giving us a quartet of spoiled brats complaining about their predicaments. There is a fair amount of that, but the lamentations come with more pith than self-pity. Dunham has also taken criticism for a lack of diversity, that the series focuses on a privileged slice of her generation. I find the objection silly and patronizing. Dunham has said she will get more multicultural next season, but I hope she doesn’t overcorrect. She is clearly writing about the women she knows—and has said as much—and all she owes us is the truth of their characters and the milieu through which they move. That she has done.

Meanwhile the discussions continue to go on around me, and as usual, I am as high-decibel opinionated as the next person—only this time as a fervent defender. Go Girls.

Buzz Kill

By Anne Taylor Fleming — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 17:34:00 GMT

Illustration by Gracia Lam

When did it happen? I looked up and suddenly a whole chunk of Santa Monica, my birthplace, had gone cool—not just from the usual Pacific breezes, but from the invasion of dot-com companies. In my mind, this industry was and would always be a Bay Area fixture. That’s where Steve Jobs and the Jobs wanna-bes clustered in a hypercaffeinated, relatively unostentatious environment that nurtured the cloistered geeks, the driven iconoclasts. It never occurred to me that they would make their way to our sunny shore. But that’s what’s happening. With their electric bikes and iEverythings, the tech masters are burrowing in, co-opting the warehouses and factories whose jobs have long since migrated to L.A.’s larger industrial corridors. A drive along Olympic or Colorado or Centinela reveals a bunch of start-ups nestled among

the older entertainment companies and the postproduction houses. More often than not they are small concerns like BeachMint, which operates Web sites for celebrity-designed products, pulling in $75 million in investor backing. This growing tech presence has earned Santa Monica a catchy nickname: Silicon Beach.

Part of me says, Great. Time to make more jobs—especially for recent college grads for whom the lagging economy has delayed career launches by years. But another part frets: How in the world is this going to work, what with all these added employees coming in and out each day? The 15-acre Yahoo! Center alone holds multiple businesses and has parking for 3,000 cars. That’s just one locale spilling its drivers into the rush hour madness. The jam in Santa Monica is causing traffic snarls that paralyze the Westside between 3 and 7 p.m., the 10 freeway and all the side streets slowing to a crawl. Yes, traffic can be insane throughout L.A., but trying to leave my home turf during the week has got to be at the top of the “I’m-going-to-kill-myself” list. Forget whatever shortcuts we clever locals think we know. They are no better. We shake our heads; it can’t go on this way. Traffic is the grim local Topic A—make that Topics A through Z.

Just as the Santa Monica boom reaches critical mass I see a glimmer of hope: the completion of the Expo Rail Line in 2015. It’s the final westward leg of the 15.2-mile route from downtown to the ocean, a 46-minute ride. There will be three stations in Santa Monica. You can already see the bones of one of the hubs rising next to Bergamot Station at 26th and Olympic. This is no simple undertaking, but rather the beginning of a full-tilt “transit village,” roughly 800,000 square feet of art and retail space and residential units spread among five buildings—sexy social engineering stuff. Another large complex is being built on three acres in the heart of the Civic Center area, an easy walk to the final Expo stop at 4th and Colorado. It will have 160 affordable rental units and 158 luxury condos, plus shops and restaurants, plazas and gardens. It’s estimated that by 2030, 64,000 Angelenos will be making the downtown-to-ocean trip daily. Santa Monica even put in a shiny new Bike Center near the main terminus, providing 360 secure spots for bicycles, along with repair and rental services. The idea is that commuters will be able to pedal from home to their closest Expo stop, hop on the train with their bikes, and then have a safe place to stash their wheels when they get to their destination. In short, it’s a more energetic, complicated way to get around than we are accustomed to.

I wonder if we’re ready for the extra forethought and planning, and for something even deeper. This is a city that lives by the mantra “I drive, therefore I am.” Anyone who grew up here sees driving as the ticket to freedom, a rite of passage. Are we really going to surrender the spontaneity our automobiles afford us, the chance to jump into the car and head up PCH for a lazy lunch or to leave work early and swing by the Getty Center to take in a new show? That’s a lot to give up, the thrill of the moment. Yet in the gridlock of everyday traffic, we are losing that freedom anyway.

/ / / /

Clearly Santa Monica is spearheading a grand social experiment. How appropriate for this spunky place that was the epicenter of a revolution in the late 1970s, when a group of civic activists took over the government, intending to protect, preserve, and defend a singular quality of life. Only then the city’s nickname was the People’s Republic of Santa Monica.

I call an old pal, Derek Shearer, one of the key players from those days. Shearer was on the planning commission, right in the middle of things, and his then-wife, Ruth Yannatta Goldway, was mayor. It was a heady time, when the Vietnam-era activists, including Santa Monica residents Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda, were involved in the local scene. Their moxie and energy were high. The newly installed renegades were not going to let their seaside gem fall prey to developers. Their plans were big and essentially conservative, in the literal sense of the word, though that was not the view of those on the right, who squawked loudly. It is amusing to remember that the People’s Republic was born just as Ronald Reagan landed in the White House, the yin and yang of the California psyche.

Shearer offers a tour of the town he so visibly loves. It’s a Wednesday, and we walk through the farmers’ market, the granddaddy of them all, and down the 3rd Street Promenade. He tells me that the idea was to give the city a European flavor, keep it manageable—pedestrian and bike friendly—with a lively street life. The first thing he and his cohorts did upon assuming power was to declare a building moratorium. There were dozens of major projects in the pipeline, big ones that would have spiked into the sky overlooking the water. When the skirmishes with the opposition were over and the dust settled, the city had a strict height limit and zoning rules and had exacted quid pro quo arrangements with developers: If they were allowed to build, they had to give back—a park here, affordable housing there. We drive around, passing at one point the old Hayden-Fonda clapboard cottage on Wadsworth in Ocean Park. I was in that house for a function, and I smile at the memory: the long hair, the optimism, the arrogance.

I am struck while glancing around—at the market, the bike paths, the commercial streets that have retained their small-town flavor, even glammed-up Montana Avenue—at how much has been preserved. Yes, the Promenade has one too many chain stores. But the coastline is hardly Miami Beach or any resort town that’s been overrun by tacky condos and apartment houses. Shearer shows a flicker of pride when I say this. He gestures to the lofts atop the restaurants and shops downtown. This was the vision we had, he says, that’s now coming to fruition. He believes there are enough safeguards in place to maintain what he and his co-idealists set in motion decades ago. Read the Santa Monica Land Use and Circulation Element document online and you have to be stirred by its noble mission of “preserving the City’s unique character” while encouraging controlled growth and a “multi-modal transportation system that incentivizes walking, biking and transit.”

Revolution, round two. It feels scary. Whether Santa Monica can manage its popularity so that its streets and freeways aren’t clogged with cars come quitting time will be the trick. I love the place more than any other, and I am hoping that the city planners will honor their word and that I will honor mine when I promise to be first in line when the lightrail comes to town. Bring it on. I think I am ready to get out of my car.

Movies A-Go-Go

By Anne Taylor Fleming — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 08:00:00 GMT

Illustration by Gracia Lam

On a chilly night in December 1967, I stood in a long line in front of a movie theater—exactly where in the city I cannot remember now—to be one of the first people to see The Graduate. I was with a college friend, and both of us wanted bragging rights for having caught the much anticipated film. We also wanted to experience it before anyone else could spoil it for us. The queue was aquiver with like-minded energy, everyone keyed up with expectation. We felt as if we were at the center of the cultural universe. The movie did not disappoint—not then or the many times I saw it again, with Dustin Hoffman as the nasally young nerd-turned-inadvertent boy toy seduced by the elegant, older Mrs. Robinson, played by Anne Bancroft. Their grappling was so transgressive, so European. They signified the general unbuckling that was beginning to sweep the country. Movies mattered; they spoke the truth. They showed us ourselves. It was a tumultuous period, and the screens of America reflected that back.

For decades I was a determined viewer—dashing off in the first wave of fans whenever a hot film was released. If you went to a party, you could count on guests gabbing about Easy Rider or Five Easy Pieces or the smoldering Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver or Raging Bull. They were able to recall dialogue, whole scenes. I was, too. Moviegoing was a tribal pleasure, a communal rite. We didn’t want to miss anything. We met for an early show and a meal later or vice versa. If you did dinner first, then you had to have drinks after for the inevitably raucous and contentious postviewing debriefing. That was as much fun as anything, an occasion for high-decibel opining about camera angles and actors’ accents and why movies weren’t a writers’ medium. We rushed off to the latest Spielberg or Eastwood film as if it were a school assignment and met every year on Oscar night with our handmade ballots.

For those of us deeply rooted in L.A., movies weren’t just an artistic touchstone. They were bigger than that, part of the local DNA. This was the home of the Industry, and we took pride in that fact. I certainly did, with both parents in the business. Some of my early memories are of my mother done up in period western wifely gear—a floor-length dress, hair in a bun—perhaps for a segment of Rawhide (speaking of Eastwood). I see my director father, too, sitting in his chair, laughing with the crew. They were so happy on those sets—fantasy worlds of fake saloons and New York city streets. I loved being with them for the process and then looking at the finished product. It was magic.

I felt bad when I started to drift out of the moviegoing habit. It began maybe six years ago. The whole endeavor grew sour, as it did for many of my friends. There was, of course, the ever-worsening traffic. After a stressful day, who wanted to be stuck on streets with irritable drivers and then try to find a parking space? There were also the ridiculously high ticket and concession prices. Throw in the increasing rudeness of audience members, with their chatting and texting. No, I found myself telling my husband when he suggested going out, let’s just stay home and watch a DVD.

Which brings us to the technological revolution that is changing everything. Once there seemed to be a Blockbuster on every corner, and many a Friday I popped into one to stock up for the weekend. I blinked, and the rental outlets were gone. Now, in the era of streaming video, one doesn’t need to go anywhere. Possess a smart phone and the world comes to the palm of your hand. Or, why even watch a film when you can make one, with yourself as the star? Young people are great at marketing themselves; they have a form of democratizing, multitasking narcissism. If they are going to enter a theater to watch something, it had better be hyperstimulating and full of dazzling stunts like Mission: Impossible—Ghost Protocol, one of the few successes of the Christmas season. No wonder film attendance has hit a 16-year low.

/ / / /

We are still watching, but we’re watching television—and that’s no fluke. It’s almost as if there has been a complete transposition, with TV becoming the relevant and creative medium. Whenever I get together with friends, we don’t talk about movies. We argue about whether The Sopranos or The Wire is the best show ever and agree that Steve Buscemi and Claire Danes, the respective stars of Boardwalk Empire and Homeland, give us the good creeps for their gripping volatility. I was devoted to Hung, the show about a male prostitute that I found witheringly comic-sad. We wax on, pleased and surprised about how even network shows have gotten bolder and riskier. Almost everyone I know—men included—likes The Good Wife, and a bunch, particularly younger women, are amused by the potty-mouthed protagonists of 2 Broke Girls. I myself am trying to connect with the new fem-raunch trend, though as a rule I am not a fan of sitcoms, with their aggressive tugging on the funny bone. That said, I get the appeal of the hip Modern Family.

But for all the pluses of current television, there is a definite loss of the unique feeling that happens when you are with a crowd in a darkened theater, seeming to breathe as one, laughing or groaning together, senses on shared alert, images bouncing off dozens of eyeballs. There is nothing quite like the contagion of giggles that besets an audience, your own mirth feeding off everyone else’s. Or the moments when you are suddenly aware that you are surrounded by held breaths, all of you waiting for something terrible to happen. Going to a theater implies a kind of surrender to not only what’s onscreen but to the collective sensation and the hope that you are about to be enchanted or terrified or about to laugh yourself silly—in public, together. I miss that.

So what will it take for us to reacquire the habit? The proliferation around town of swankily upgraded venues, like the Landmark 12-screen multiplex near me in West L.A., is helping. I have friends who are so devoted to the place, they won’t go anywhere else. I confess I love it: the extrawide seats, the restaurants within strolling distance, the ability to make a reservation, and the varied fare, from art house indies to mainstream hits. On many a weekend the Landmark sells out. Ditto the ArcLight Cinema in Hollywood, which features similarly cushy benefits. The 2011 revenue at that complex was up 10 percent over the previous year.

So there are success stories—at least as far as these locales go. More lavish theaters will follow. Maybe, too, we will also be treated to better offerings, pieces that are startling and insightful and that stir us all, though in our greater diversity perhaps it is unrealistic to think that one movie can wow the nation with its message and artistry. I discover some veins of optimism that good times are ahead. My film critic pal Peter Rainer thinks we might be headed for something analogous to the late 1960s, when there was an artistic thaw. The old studio system was crumbling, attendance was down, and then, wham: A coterie of brave new filmmakers emerged to shake things up—Scorsese and Coppola chief among them. To see The Godfather again, the first one for the first time—that’s an impossible dream. But the longing for such an experience remains, for a movie so singularly beautiful and so cruel and so original.

I’ll probably see it on TV.

Postscript: Call of the Wild

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 17:33:00 GMT

Photograph courtesy flickr/Dru Bloomfield

I am amazed that I have never written about coyotes. I have lived in Los Angeles all my life and have been aware of them since I was a child. They slithered around the edges of my imagination, with their wild howling and doglike appearance. I wasn’t exactly scared of them when I did see them, but they loomed large in the mind of a native girl because they were the only predators I saw up close from time to time or heard while on walks in the mountains. What a remarkable thing: to live in a vast, sprawling urban space and yet also be in such close proximity to something so wild and free. Of course there were those scary tales every now and again about one of these animals killing a domestic pet or trying to drag a small child out of a yard, stories that sent a shiver through the city. But until I write about something, I am never truly sure what I think.

Now that I have reckoned with the animal on paper in my Open City column, I am a bit in awe of these wily creatures that have outmaneuvered us humans at every turn. We have tried to poison and trap them, and yet here they are among us—as strong as ever. They have figured out a way to thrive in this great big teeming city, to live alongside us—and, in effect, to reeducate us, to try to teach us how to share this piece of the planet with them.

Much of that reeducation has fallen to a handful of dedicated coyote experts—to whom I, for one, am most grateful. I couldn’t have written about the animal without these experts’ fervor and guidance. As a journalist, I am often struck by the willingness of people to enlighten me, to bring me up to speed about this or that. So it was in this matter. Straight out of the box (courtesy of Google) I ran into a woman named Camilla Fox, as fluent and smart a coyote advocate as you can find. She is the executive director of Project Coyote and also a wildlife consultant with the Animal Welfare Institute. There is nothing touchy-feely about Ms. Fox. She is pragmatic, statistic based, and enthusiastically dry-eyed and yet impassioned about the animal she has made a big part of her life’s work. We must learn to live with them, she counsels, not try to wipe them out or befriend them. They are clearly here to stay, she says, so cohabitation is the goal.

Her sentiments are echoed by Gregory Randall, wildlife specialist for the City of Los Angeles Animal Services. These two, sometimes working together, are changing the way Angelenos are learning to live with these animals. During the last few years, there has been a real shift in the way we are now acting toward the coyotes in our midst. We aren’t trying to slaughter them; nor are we trying to seduce them with food. We are instead learning to do a mutually respectful dance, leaving them to roam as they will, while also understanding what we need to do to protect ourselves.

So a small revolution has taken place—or maybe not so small. I am inclined to think that how we treat our magical place and its magical creatures—with what courtesy and care—is a big reflection of the state of our morality, not to put too fancy a spin on things. Makes me feel better about my city, and that always makes me happy.

ALSO: Read Anne Taylor Fleming’s February column, Call of the Wild.

Call of The Wild

By Anne Taylor Fleming — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 17:32:00 GMT

Illustration by Gracia Lam

I was walking my dogs recently, an early evening stroll around my Westside neighborhood, when a woman standing in her driveway stopped me. “You need to be careful,” she said with concern. She was warning me not about a human threat but an animal one, specifically a coyote. She had encountered it a few days earlier while walking her large dog. In the fading light of dusk its wild eyes stared her down, and then the coyote literally gave chase, she says, as she hurried toward her house. The animal finally peeled off in the face of her dog’s fierce barks and disappeared. I was, I admit, a tad incredulous. In my experience coyotes tend to be shy, not given to pursuit—certainly not of adults or big dogs. But in the next few days a couple more neighbors reported sightings. I don’t spook easily, but I did alter my routine, in part because in addition to my hefty Labrador I now have a scrappy ten-pound black rescue, a morsel for a predator—or so he seemed. I walked in the bright light of morning, both pups leashed firmly and held at my side. Was there reason to be scared? Was I overreacting? During my childhood here, I was aware of coyotes. I heard them before I ever saw one. That was on a walk in the Santa Monica Mountains when I was a kid. I was stunned by the sound they made, a primal call so near my safe, suburban home. I had never heard such howling—plaintive and gripping and savage at the same time. Someone told me they were celebrating a kill, the lot of them presumably licking their bloody chops after devouring a rabbit or a rodent. I was reassured that they were not interested in eating me, the fear of a child who suddenly finds herself in a Laura Ingalls Wilder story. There was a thrill to that—discovering I was, like the girls in those books, part of the natural world, that while I lived in a huge, teeming city, I also lived in a place where wild things roamed.

A decade later I saw my first coyote, also in those mountains, just above a rise—a loner, much smaller than I expected, German shepherd-like and yet catlike, too, a 20-pound skulker with yellowish eyes, substantial stand-up ears, and a plume of a tail. After giving a sharp glance at us humans, it turned and sauntered off. I felt elated to have finally seen the source of the nighttime sounds. I love that we reside, in effect, in a theme park—one of those animal safari preserves but without the chain link. Within minutes of my house I can be on a hillside or a trail and spot a bobcat or hear the rustle of a snake. Outside the window at night I often detect the scratching of a raccoon.

I always felt more privileged than fearful about their presence. Over the years I have walked in the mountains with my various dogs—all sizable canines, I should add—and I was never trepidatious, though I took notice of the occasional stories of a coyote venturing into a backyard and snatching a small pet. Even the account in the early 1980s of a coyote mauling a toddler to death in Glendale, which sent shivers through all of us, seemed an isolated and bizarre event. Nothing of that magnitude has happened since, but it does appear as if the number of spooky coyote anecdotes is on the rise. A woman told me she saw one striding purposefully down Fairfax in the middle of the day. Is there a coyote population boom in play?

/ / / /

As it turns out, there are not more of them; there are more of us. At any given time roughly 4,000 to 7,000 coyotes occupy the county’s 4,084 square miles, a number that has remained fairly steady. The animals are apparently self-sustaining. If there are too many for the food supply, they just have smaller litters. As we expand our footprint onto wild land, building our houses where coyotes hunt, it’s no wonder they wander into our backyards. Closely related to wolves and dogs, they thrive in suburban and even urban settings. Resourceful by nature, they take advantage of our unsecured garbage and numerous water sources: dog bowls left out, unfenced pools. Normally they avoid people as they scrounge for small animals such as rabbits, rats, and mice. The unfortunate victims are cats, which we tend to let run freer than our dogs. Real trouble comes when well-meaning people start leaving out food for them. That’s an open invitation for the creatures to mix it up with humans.

I am struck by how we Angelenos relate to wild animals. We have a need to turn them into pets, to attempt to domesticate them (like leaving out that food) or to demonize them. Google the word coyote and you will see any number of pictures showing a menacing snarl, teeth bared. We gyrate between polar opposites: They are our coveted sidekicks or lethal beasts. In short, we look at them through our lens—through how they relate to us. Think of the people who buy lions or tigers or monkeys and try to live with them as pets (or in the case of the occasional chimpanzee, as a substitute child), and then are horrified when one of them turns fierce. Our boundaries are lousy, to use a bit of psychojargon.

When you talk to coyote experts, you don’t hear anything fuzzy. They don’t idolize the coyote, but they do respect it. They speak about the endurance of the animal despite all our attempts at eradication, about how it thrives throughout North America. Coyotes appear in the most surprising places. They roam Rock Creek Park in the heart of Washington, D.C., where I walk when I visit friends there, and have become fixtures in Chicago, where they slink through the alleyways. They are everywhere. The thing is, we need them. Coyotes eat the rodents that eat the birds—so if we decimate the coyotes, we lose the singing in the trees; we upset the delicate balance. We also lose an animal that is socially complex. Far from being the loners of myth, coyotes mate for life and live in packs like wolves. They have their loyalties; they have their bonds.

Rather than trying to seduce the coyote or, conversely, to annihilate it (the city has spent millions trying the latter through trapping and poisoning, to little avail), we should learn to coexist. That is both the sensible and the moral thing to do, and more Angelenos are getting on that wavelength. In Glendale recently, officials had planned to kill a bunch of coyotes that had moved into an abandoned house, but residents complained, and the idea was scrapped. The Calabasas city council has redirected funds from trapping efforts to education, teaching people how to respond to the animals, reminding them to keep small pets inside, lock up garbage, collect fruit that has fallen from trees. If you do come across a coyote on the street, don’t run; be loud and assertive, bang and stamp.

That’s what I shall do. I will be mindful, prepared to make a noisy fool of myself if need be. I will not stop going into the hills (though I will certainly leave the tiny rescue puppy at home). Being in nature is a deep and pleasurable part of my life. When I was near the Getty Center not long ago, I again heard the call of the coyote. What I now know is that the high, howling cry is not the celebration of a kill but a form of communication, a way of saying, “I am here and this is my territory, so stay away.” I listened with new, informed ears, realizing I was privy to the language of some wild thing. How lucky for me.

ALSO: Read Postscript: Call of the Wild

Light Years

By Anne Taylor Fleming — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 18:07:00 GMT

Illustration by Gracia Lam

I am lying in bed reading the paper. It is dusk and still warm out. The windows are open, and I can feel the early night air. In the other room my husband’s nebulizer machine is making its regular whooshing noise. He is having a breathing treatment before dinner. I smell tantalizingly spicy aromas coming from the kitchen and hear the TV on low. Occasionally there is a gust of laughter as Joey, the cook—he’s not really the cook per se, but more on that in a moment—talks to our new puppy. Joey calls him the howler monkey. He says he remembers those animals from his native Belize and that this small rescue dog, with his simian forehead and tiny brown eyes, looks just like one. “Come here, little howler,” he says, followed by the nicest, gentlest laugh in the world. We hired him in a minute as a caretaker. I had resisted having help. For 40 years I have lived with one man, a deep, romantic, tumultuous marriage.

I was loath to give that closeness up, to let anyone else in, even as it became increasingly obvious that I was overwhelmed. For three years since my husband, Karl, had been diagnosed with a rare blood disorder, one that compounded his ongoing pulmonary disease and made every breath an audible fight, I had been the nurse, driver, cheerleader, and all-around helpmate. I had done well for a long stretch—at least I thought so. Finally my nerves were shot. I wandered the house remonstrating with the Fates, with my own inadequacies. I lost my stuff: keys, documents, bills. I went around in baggy sweatpants, no mascara, reading glasses perched on my head, usually two pairs at a time, sometimes three. If they were up there, I reasoned, I couldn’t lose them. But I was losing it.

My sister said Karl and I needed help. My stepsons agreed. My friends, ditto. Yet how do you look for someone to care for the man you have loved beyond all reason and who is now fading before your eyes? That is a private act, isn’t it? Shouldn’t it be? I wanted him to myself. I didn’t want some stranger handling him and bandaging him and washing his hair. That’s mine, that body. Please don’t touch. So my heart kept saying.

I surrendered the day after Karl fell. As I swabbed the blood from his leg and from the floor, I resolved to find someone. I called a friend who has been our accountant for years. She has a fair number of older clients, and I figured she might know somebody. Within a half hour she responded with two names. I wrote them down and eyed them for days. Then I called the second person on the list—Joey—because I liked the sound of his name. A few days later he was in our kitchen talking to me. A few days after that he was working for us. A few days after that, when it became apparent we needed him during the nights as well, he was living with us.

Friends have relayed their problems with caregivers they have hired: tensions and power struggles and things disappearing. Me—I hit the jackpot. I am astonished at Joey’s presence when I walk in the house after running an errand. Ah, there is someone here. It’s Joey, with his round face and warm voice. He is with Karl, helping him with his medications or treatments (I don’t need to rush in and do it or worry that a certain prescription has run out or that Karl has fallen while I was at the market). Or Joey is outside playing with the dogs, throwing their balls and laughing, always laughing. I had forgotten that sound in particular, as Karl has been mostly silent in the last year. He does not have the breath to talk much. I have missed the conversations that marked our marriage, the trivial bits of marital banter: what to eat for dinner, what color to paint the living room, where to go on vacation. Now here is this lovely 35-year-old Belizean with a lilt in his voice asking how I am, whether it’s cold outside, and if I want something to eat. He loves the news, and when I stroll in from my work desk, he catches me up on what’s happening. He is trying to teach me his native language. I call my dogs by their new Spanish nicknames: perro callejero for the rescue, perro angel for the big Lab.

****

For all the joy Joey has unexpectedly brought to us, there is also in him a palpable sadness, and I feel it. He has left behind his country, one he recalls with longing—his childhood with six siblings, fresh food from his grandfather’s farm. He misses the family members he seldom gets to see, and there are tears when he speaks. He says he sometimes wishes he could do it over, that if he had stayed his life would have been calmer. The opportunity was here, though. When he arrived in this country, he stocked shelves at a supermarket and mopped floors. Then his brother-in-law got him a night job at a warehouse, but his knees gave out and he started looking after older patients. His first job was his worst: a mean octogenarian who raved throughout the night. But Joey says he knew he had found his calling.

I ask him whether it feels strange living with other people the way he does with us, ensconced in the middle of another person’s world. He says he has been very lucky, that he has worked mostly for good people and learned to navigate the instant intimacies that come with a situation like ours, the two of us up together in the dark of night when Karl is having a restless or disturbed sleep. “We are a team,” he informs me, and I know he sees my sadness just as I see his.

“I would breathe for him if I could,” I tell Joey as we leave the room where Karl is tossing fitfully. “I know,” he says. “We will get through it.”

On his days off he goes to his apartment near Florence and Vermont in South L.A. He has family nearby—two older sisters and their husbands. There are also nieces and nephews who are having their own children. He is close to them all and brings back tales of their lives, their romances, their new babies, their big dinners of chicken stew, pozole, rice and beans. Food: We are making proper meals again. That was a passion of Karl’s and mine. At day’s end we would actually tussle over who got to make supper. That stopped (another ending) as Karl’s appetite waned and mine along with it. Now Joey has livened things up. One of those naturally gifted cooks, driven by the pleasure of his own palate, he is fixing stuffed poblanos and potatoes mashed with evaporated milk and cheese, gooey and rich. He returns from his time away with a dozen thick handmade tortillas and red achiote paste for his soups.

He is bringing his world into ours, his piece of the city into our neighborhood. We Angelenos tend to live in our own small, isolated enclaves. We visit other sections—as I have over a lifetime here—but only occasionally have a chance, as I do now, to reside in two parts of L.A. at once. That’s the way it feels. At night Joey and I watch the Latin music shows, the women vibrant and shiny in makeup and spangles. He says he will buy me red lipstick when he next goes to Ross Dress for Less, even though I tell him I have never worn it. Time to start, he says with his big smile. There is a kindness in him that is rare—much beyond his professional skills, which are consummate yet seamless, if that makes sense. He looks after Karl with quiet ease; he protects my husband’s pride. “I am blessed,” he says. “I know I have changed people’s lives, and I have been changed.”

I enter my house with a lighter step. To be able to do that again, to walk into a place where there are wonderful smells and chatter that banish the dread, is a bit of magic.