After the night of the helicopter, it has taken me a little a little longer, every night to get to bed. I check to be sure that doors were locked, windows shut, too many times. Leave the porch light on, leave the backyard lights on, reconsider, turn them off, and go back ten minutes later and turn them on again.

I am also one of those people who leaves things open, who pops over to the neighbors without so much as closing the front door. I live in Culver City- what’s to worry?

More than you think.

Every week, almost every local media outlet, (including Crossroads) runs the Crime Blotter. It’s generally about four or five items, fairly benign little incidents that are deemed to be suitable for public consumption. (Of course, if it was your car that was stolen, it was not at all benign in your eyes.) The assumption that the police would you like you to make is that that’s it- that’s all the crime we had in Culver City this week.

That’s simply not true.

The scene at my house took between 90 minutes and two hours, involved about a dozen police officers, a dog and helicopter with a searchlight. It did not make the blotter. While I can pause at the thought perhaps Lt. Izuka thought this one had already gotten more than enough coverage, it seems more likely that the idea that there are prowlers out there is too threatening to the status quo. I estimate that what we get from the police as blotter material is just about the tip of the iceberg. The very smallest tip.

When I was the editor at the Culver City News, “police silence” used to drive me fairly crazy. I’d get a crime report from another source, write the story, and call the cops to confirm it. Knowing that the paper had to go to the printer Wednesday afternoon, they would often wait until Wednesday evening to return my call. “So glad to hear from you, “ I’d say “I did hold the front page so we could get a quote from you.” Without running the exact stats on how many times I printed the line “Culver City Police did not return calls requesting comment,” I can say – too often.

I hate having to lock my doors and windows. It depresses me that I need to put my laptop away out of sight when I leave the house. But truth is an essential ingredient in my life, and even ugly truths are more satisfying than lies.

The momentary break-in at my house in Venice changed my life. This happened in the midst of years of gang warfare in Venice Beach where there were bullets flying on a regular basis, and my safety rested on the fact that I was not a teenage boy wearing a bandanna of a certain color. While a broken kitchen window was bad, the incident prompted my landlord to put bars on my windows, which was horrible. As much as I hated the idea, I could not talk him out of it. My little palace turned into my little prison, in more ways than one. Every car I heard speeding down the alley in the night had my heart racing. All the advice- get a dog, get a gun, get a boyfriend – started to sound like sense. I loved living alone, and suddenly, it was uncomfortable. No one had my back.

Here and now, we all need to know that we do have crime in Culver City. Sad but true, it’s important to lock the doors and windows, and leave the lights on. Call your neighbors and check on them. Bring in the papers and the mail if they are gone for a few days. When there was a squad car in front of my house, the number of folks in my neighborhood who called and emailed to check on me was wonderful. I think I heard from everyone in a two mile radius. We don’t live in Mayberry. There’s a whole lot more crime in any daily police report than makes it to the Crime Blotter. But I’ve got your back, and I know you’ve got mine.

It’s fun to do the news, but it’s not always fun to be the news. Not since the morning I woke up to discover a broken water main had turned my street into a lake have I felt so odd about reporting on my own adventures. Since the alleged suspect (see, I’ve learned to speak police) has been apprehended I find I’m looking back at the whole scene in a pensive mood.

Wednesday, June 1, one of those busy days. I had just posted on Facebook how quiet it would be after the kids got to sleep, and I started to work on a book I’m writing. The distinct feeling that someone out in the darkness of the back yard was looking in through the window at me gave me three separate sensations of annoyance.

First, no one has any right to be in my yard. The gates were all closed, the fence was locked and entry is by invitation only. Secondly, I hate it when I’m writing and someone is reading over my shoulder. My sentences are finished when I say they are, and previews are by invitation only. Third, post-bedtime is the golden hour of the day, one of the moments when I have uninterrupted peace to focus on writing, and someone was out in my yard, interrupting my peace, dammit. I decided I had to call the cops.

I keep the cop shop on speed dial – that’s another news habit- and as soon as I said “Hi, there’s a prowler out in my back yard,” and gave then my address, I heard the gate open and close again, and rustling of someone trying to move through the grapevine. Lots of stumbling and rustling, it’s a huge, thick bit of foliage not easily negotiated in the dark.

I went in to check on the girls – happily they were asleep – and the police kept me on the line while they sent the car.

I went out to the kitchen to peek around through the curtains and see if I could see anyone, but all was darkness. There was still someone out there. I could just feel that there was. Strangely, I was not at all afraid or concerned. I knew the police were on the way, and that we would be fine.

I saw the first police officer walking down the driveway towards the back gate, and heard the prowler jump onto the composter, which sounded as if it collapsed, and over the fence to the creek.

The next hour was amazing. I have never had the full police show, and it was quite something. Men with guns, dogs, helicopters, lights blazing, bullhorns at full volume. We have a very impressive police force. They asked if I saw anyone, and I had to say no, I just heard them. But I knew, I just knew.

Out in the yard, the cops were shining flashlights, and yelling for surrender. A helicopter appeared in the sky above. On the internet, I posted “blame me for the helicopter…” and my neighbors all jumped in with a virtual neighborhood watch.

There were phone calls to be sure I was not being held hostage, text messages asking what was going on, offers of help from all sides, and Facebook friends from as far away as Chicago, all with support and suggestions. It’s nice to have neighbors who care that your house is under siege.

The bullhorn finally woke my younger girl, who was suddenly in the hallway, crying and shaking. I scooped her up into my arms and explained that there had been someone out in the yard who did not need to be there, I called the police, and they were doing a very good job to be sure that person was gone. She melted into my chest, relieved. Still, it was rather loud for a rather long time.

By the time the show was over, there was no suspect in custody, but the intruder had left the immediate area. After getting everyone tucked in again, I sat down with cup of herbal tea and a shot of brandy. I had gotten a strange email earlier in the week about a coward, and I was not sure if it was joke telling me I was a scaredy-cat, or if the person who sent it was afraid of me. (It was probably about politics- everything is, you know- I get all kinds of interesting emails in this business.) But it did make me think.

I thought back to my previous life in Venice Beach, when I had been truly terrified of someone breaking into my little house. One night it finally happened. I was in bed when I heard someone breaking the kitchen window, and my heart almost stopped I was so scared. Despite every urgent need I had to hide under the bed and cry, I jumped up and shouted in my angriest voice “You better get out here before I kill you!” and instantly, they were back out the window, dropped their getaway car into gear and sped off.

I was amazed that I was really that brave. Still, I did call the cops, and then called my sister, who stayed on the phone with me until the LAPD arrived. I was the one shaking and crying that night, thinking I had just escaped certain rape or murder by … just being brave?

I got all the same advice from my friends on both occasions. Get a dog, get a gun, get a security system, and hey what’s a woman like you doing sleeping alone anyway?

I like other people’s dogs just fine, but I don’t think I want to own one. I don’t care for guns at all. Security system? Well, the neighbors are great, the cops are prompt and thorough. I doubt I could do better than that.

That feeling that I get when I know what’s happening, it’s called intuition. Sometimes, even without any empirical evidence, I just know what’s going on. I can’t report that as news. I have to wait for the pieces to fall into place.

When I woke up on Thursday morning and saw the broken shelves of my composter oozing undigested egg shells and coffee grounds, I knew that everything I heard was just what was going on.

It was not just about solar panels. It was about power.
Everyone involved – Todd, Ali, Pat, Kathy, Steve and Patti are all folks who are comfortable with responsibility – or should we say, power- and yet their collective ability to toss a simple pragmatic beach ball around the room was lacking in finesse. Or success.

It put me in mind of another evening at the city council, when a resident, Rich, had come to speak about the choice of trees the city was going to plant on Sepulveda Blvd. While the staff at city hall had presented two different species, Rich felt he had specific knowledge as to why neither of these were appropriate choices. The staff member under whose authority the trees had been chosen, (that would be Sol,) spoke about what factors had been considered. Rich was not satisfied and while decorum was maintained both seemed frustrated, if not totally disgusted.

This one was about trees. Which can obscure the forest.

We are (really, Culver City, you know this) blessed with a population so educated, so talented, so experienced, so very good at what they do, it’s boggling. We have truly amazing volunteers. The people who show up to run the bake sales could write a book, either about baking or sales or both. I would not be surprised if one of them already did. The folks at the fundraiser yard sale have more advanced academic degrees and marketing know-how than the execs running Target. The amount of talent walking around in sneakers on these streets is just mind-blowing. The folks who put their shoulders to the wheel to make things happen deserve to be listened to with more than grimacing impatience.

That does not mean they are always right, or that advice from the floor should automatically trump the work of the paid staff. There are good reasons why the staff has been hired to perform their jobs, and respect should be given to them as well, if not first. There simply needs to be a better balance. When someone with experience, professional background and smarts is there to see that something that concerns the community is being taken care of, that’s important.

I do not offer my applause the people who just complain and don’t address whatever they consider to be the problem with their own efforts. Anyone can accuse, kvetch or just whine, and it accomplishes nothing. (And then they ask for more time to speak – sigh- )

I do include all of our elected officials in the volunteer slot, as they do a heroic amount of work for next to nothing. What we pay our politicos wouldn’t buy lunch in any larger form of government. But anyone with a name-plate and a seat on the dais does not need more microphone time; they have that.

As the financial crisis grinds on, and the people in Sacramento continue to make things worse, we need our volunteers.  Finding 6 billion dollars does not mean that we are saved; it just means we’re only chest deep rather that up to our eyeballs. While we step into another week of financial matters at City Hall, another round of negotiations and cuts at the School Board, it’s a moment to reshape the power play.

The people in our community who step up deserve to be heard. The help that they offer to our understaffed, overworked employees really is more than priceless. That does not give them the right to take over. This is not a game of “Capture the Flag.” But it is about how we play with each other. It is about power.

We elected people to take care of this- making sure that the staff is handling the practical matters, and negotiating the kind of community support that will give us the results we want. But it is also the responsiblity of each individual to add their best, and not fall into blaming and name calling.   This is not an “us versus them” issue. We are all “us.” All of us.

So if we take away all the titles, and just use the names we would use in the sand box, does that make it easier to recognize that we are human?

Solar power for the schools is going forward. Trees will be planted. There will be a filing of the correspondence. With the a bit more patience and a bit more respect on both sides, we can do much more with so much less rancor. Let’s start now. Wanna play ?

“The difference between not having enough and having enough is huge,” he said. “The difference between having enough and having far more than enough is not that big.”

As we continue to stare down the huge budget cuts the recession has mandated, we grapple with the need for equity and balance in how we pare down. But is it required that no one make more?

The issue of Patti Jaffe’s salary is not a real issue, and it is simply time for it to go away.

Since she was given the post of school district superintendent both union president David Mielke and school board member Karlo Silbiger have not missed a single opportunity to remind the public how unfair it seems to them that the superintendent of schools have a paycheck of more then $200,000 a year.

I asked Jaffe at a school board meeting several weeks ago how that felt to her; to have the same people bringing this topic up every time. She looked down at the desk with a shy and embarrassed grimace offered, “I hope this will stop soon.”

To say that everyone was pleased the school board gave Patti Jaffe the post is an exquisite understatement. A huge slice of the community turned out to celebrate and congratulations poured forth from both teachers and classified employees who had worked with her at many different levels. It was as close to civic nirvana as a school district could get. But the recurring refrain that she is overpaid is not really about money.

Citing the example of the new LAUSD Superintendent who voluntarily took a pay cut, the idea that the superintendent should follow suit came up at the Democratic club meeting, and one teacher even used the phrase “mending the hole in our hearts.”

Maybe it’s a crab barrel thing. Perhaps you’ve seen how an open barrel of crabs does not provide an escapes route for the layer on top, because as soon as a crab begins to crawl out, another crab will grab it and pull it back in. Mielke spoke at length from the dais of the Democratic Club meeting about how the current system promotes people out of their strength. Rather than keeping the best teachers in the classroom, the way our pay scale is set moves teachers into administration for the sake of a bigger check.

We have a huge inequity in our culture between skills, accomplishments, and rewards. Teaching, among the most vital and crucial professions any culture can fund, is always underpaid. Almost any profession that involves constant contact with children is not a high salary or high status gig. Ever wonder why?

Consider that during the Soviet era in Russia, physicians went from being highly paid and highly valued to being paid much less, with an attendant loss of social status. Why? The profession shifted with the educational opportunities available to all from being heavily male to being mostly female. Boiled down to the essence, women are always paid less. If you are a teacher or a nurse, no one needs to tell you this.

While I cannot imagine that Karlo or Dave would ever think of themselves as less than feminist the fact is that the pay scale for teachers simply isn’t equal to the pay scale for administration. Look at your professional history here, guys. You are a trapped in a pink collar ghetto.

While the gender parity in the teaching profession has adjusted radically in the last few decades- we don’t say ‘male teacher’ the same way we say ‘male nurse’- women are still statistically making about 70 cents on the dollar compared to what men make.

Patti Jaffe has worked her way up from part time aide all the way to the top job. Her fans are legion. The fact that she is wearing a skirt to do a job that has traditionally worn a tie is a victory for all of us. To keep on insisting that this woman, with her totally unique skill set and hometown resume, is somehow taking bread out of the mouths of the rank and file just doesn’t make any sense.

Full disclosure- I am not one of Ms. Jaffe’s legions of fans. I never worked with her, never took a class, and I have some big problems with how she deals with a few particular issues. I am a raving fan of the teachers in our district. The tremendous effort that goes into educating my daughters is not just professional excellence, but personal commitment and an inspirational amount of understanding, affection and creativity. I volunteer in the classrooms whenever I can. I know how great our teachers are.

To some, it looks as if Patti Jaffe has far more than enough, but no one else can know what enough means to her. We are all glad she took the job.

It’s clear that no matter what, Karlo and Dave will have some point to pick and that’s fine; that is their job, and we should all be glad that that’s what they do. Democracy should always be about opening up the margins, and going over the details. It’s often the case that those of us who don’t have enough money feel resentful towards those who do. But it’s not about the money. It’s about equity and security and respect.

While those who are holding pink slips are wondering what the next year will bring for them, I wish with all my heart that they have enough. Even if Patti were to volunteer to take a pay cut, it will not save the jobs we all long to save.

While we strive to create an economy where gender roles do not equate out to pay inequity, let’s be gracious enough to allow a unique individual to keep her contact where it is.  As we try to steer through the next budget, just having a good leader might be enough.

At the city council on Feb. 14, another discussion of the prospects for Parcel B went through the same sieve. In asking the council to approve of a “request for proposals” process Redevelopment Agency Director Sol Blumenthal stated “ I don’t think the agency can be accused of acting in haste.” Andy Weissman noted that this was his third decade of looking at the possibilities for the parcel, from his time on the planning commission to his current seat. Ken Kaufman, owner of Rush Street, noted that when he signed his lease in 2007, Parcel B was a part of the enticement of opening downtown, with the promise that something would be built there.

“Do something.”

Both the council and the board have to consider carefully. Beyond the time and money already invested, they need to be able to see how to please as many people as possible while offending or alienating as few as they can. But anything left to constant discussion can’t be resolved, and cannot be built. The time for more information and more input really needs to be over.

Change is a challenge to human nature, and these changes that we ourselves create (as opposed to those we simply accept from the outside) are really daunting. Why? Then we are left with no one to blame but ourselves. In example, the previously approved design for parcel B (dubbed the Red Box) was so disliked, Mehaul O’Leary tore up a picture of it during a previous council session, to much applause, and everyone agreed it was better that that particular monster was not built. (Whew- we almost had a decision and some action.)  Still, the most perfectly located piece of real estate in town, really in all of West Los Angeles, is a temporary parking lot.

The winds of change are blowing at hurricane speeds.

Crossroads received a note this morning from the the school district’s Environmental Sustainability Committee Chair Todd Johnson that the CCUSD just lost out on $220,000 as the solar power incentive is now dropped to another level. The people who got in line ahead of us will be cashing in on that slice.

There are times when it’s prudent to wait, when the thing to do really is to gather more evidence or simply weigh the options. That time is behind us. Now, while we have a school board dealing with the next oncoming financial crisis, now is the time to transfer to sustainable energy and save money. Now, while we have just a few moments before the train arrives the east side of town is changed forever, now is the time to put up a Parcel B building that will accent downtown in a way that works to show Culver City to it’s best advantage.

No more studies, no more meetings, no more surveys or workshops. Whatever we decide to do, the moment has arrived to do it.

Do something. You will be so very glad that you did.

This is about guns, about craziness and about people.

In August of 1976, a crazy man named Cato Wilson decided that doctors were evil, and so he went out and got a gun and shot up a medical clinic. Dr. Clement Greene Martin took bullet from Wilson’s M-1 carbine rifle point blank in the chest and died.

Dr. Martin was my father.

Every time it happens again- a crazy man with a gun opens fire, I feel the same wounds in my own life reopen and bleed a little more. Not only for the victims and the loss but for the insanity that causes someone to go and get a gun, and think that murdering some figure of authority – an elected official, a doctor, a civil rights leader – will somehow solve their problems or ease their pain. Mental illness is painful.

As we talk about the life and death of Dr. King, and we talk about the bloodbath in Tuscon, we are talking about the ease of guns and the difficulty of insanity. We need to know that racial hatred and political vitriol is insanity.

We need to change our culture. We need mental health to be taken at the same level as physical health. If people were as confused and ashamed of cancer as they are of depression and schizophrenia, we would have far less treatment, and a much higher death rate. The death rate from mental illness is not counted only in the number of homicides, but suicides as well.

I had another relative, technically a cousin, but we called him Uncle John. He was so angry, so mistrustful and so paranoid, my siblings and I used to refer to him jokingly as “The Prophet of Doom.” He was not amused. He was given to quoting the Bible in a thundering voice that trembled with rage. We listened to him rant, our arms crossed over our chests, snickering quietly in the way that children do. He kept turning up the volume of his delusions until the night his paranoia became so overwhelming that he cracked up. He was the one who called the police, reasoning that those around him were obviously insane since they would not agree with him. When the cops arrived, it was clear who was crazy, and he was taken away in handcuffs, and admitted to a mental health facility. The darkness that engulfed him was one from which he did not return.

When I published the essay “Gunslingers” last year, a large part of my intent was to remind the community that the beloved and respected Albert Vera had become a crazy man with a gun. The posthumously understood fact that Mr. Vera’s heart problems were preventing adequate oxygen from getting to his brain was a classic example of physical illness begetting mental illness. We know how a lot about how brains work.

I hold great hope for the recovery of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, as she is now breathing on her own, and I know that the brain has many ways to heal. I even hold out hope for the recovery Jared Loughner, but the light there is not as strong. We know a great deal more about the brain than we know about the mind, and he may be damaged beyond repair.

When I hear about someone whose life is over because of a crazy man with a gun, that person is a member of my family. When I hear about someone who has lost all connection to reality, that person is a member of my family.

The hardest news to take was Christina Green, because there are no members of my family that I value more than little girls. When I listened to the President offering her eulogy at the memorial service, I sat down in the middle of my kitchen floor and cried like a kid.

You might have noticed that my father’s middle name was Greene, so the 9 year old who is no longer with us could be a member of my family in more ways than one.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would have been in his seventies this January. Imagine what his courage and his faith could have done to change the world, if not for a crazy man with a gun. Now imagine what a difference your courage and faith can make in shifting the assumptions in our culture. Mental illness is an illness, just like leukemia or influenza.
If we can get help to those who are suffering, then we may not have to suffer because of it. Make treatment easier to get, make guns harder to find, think of one action you can take right now that will make a difference.

We shall overcome, one day.

It’s been quite a year.

As Culver City Crossroads modestly celebrates its first birthday, I am pleased to look back over my shoulder and see the turf that has been covered. There are 730 posts on this site for your perusal, anytime. We have had new posts up at least five days a week and sometimes six and seven. We have been able to break some very big local stories: the resignation of Mark Scott as city manager, the death of Albert Vera, and the crowning of King Niko as a few examples.

Our contributors have all been stellar. The news, features, columns and events have come from sources throughout the community, and writers like Elizabeth Coombs, Scott Wyant, Gabby Friedenthal, Frances Talbott-White, Chris Ferreira, Mary McGrath and Elisabeth Hebert have all added to our depth and briliance. Photography from Robert Rissman, Joanne Tortorici Luna, Peter Jennings and many others has brightened the site and added a key element to each post. AS the seasons have turned, our real estate advice from Natalie Bergman ended and real estate advice from Heather Coombs-Perez began. My most luminous gratitude goes to Katie Malich and Bob Eklund, who have been with us since the start, and have never missed a deadline, or even needed a reminder. With such good food and so many beautiful things in the heavens to admire, stellar is the perfect adjective.

Our sponsors, who have been so supportive, have often been pleased and surprised at the audience we reach on a daily basis. While we offer support for the things that make our community what it is – the Culver City Education Foundation, the Chamber of Commerce, the Culver City Julian Dixon Library, the Academy of Visual and Performing Arts, the Downtown Business Association, and the Mamie Clayton Museum and Library, to cite a few examples – our definition of community is still growing.

When I run into people who ask, “How’s the blog?” I tell them, “Great, but it’s not a blog. It’s a newsmagazine.” Still, I find that term to be too clunky and a poor definition. While I don’t want to run a “newspaper” or even a “magazine” in the 20th Century sense of the word, just calling it a website is so bland it’s flavorless. Like adjusting the seasoning in a soup, it’s just not quite there yet. Good, but we want great.

When I began, I was going to call it Culver City Cornucopia, but my excellent webmaster, Eric Gerds, (without whom all of this would be much, much more difficult, if not utterly impossible – oceans of gratitude to Eric-) gently pointed out to me that I was possibly the only person he knew who could spell the word cornucopia. “Let’s make it easy to find,” he suggested “and we’ll get a lot more readers.”

We have readers. That is the object of the game, and whenever I check the stats, I feel like we are winning. Still, we are at a distinct crossroads between the 20th and 21st century. When I bump in to someone at the grocery store and they give me an earful of what they thought about a post, I always ask them to write. “It’s super-easy. Just click on the comment box. I would love to have what you just said in print.” Well, they may be reluctant, or just shy, but I intuitively feel that they just are not comfortable with the speed of the technology. Letters to the editor are supposed to take hours to write, and rewrite and edit. Just popping a sentence into a box and clicking – no, they would rather tell me about it at the library. So I encourage all the readers, don’t just share it with me, share it with everyone. The 20th Century is not coming back. (More good news!)

I started this project in a moment that can only be described as bleak. After 11 months as the editor of the Culver City News, at 10:30 a.m. I was told that I was fired and I given 20 minutes to clean out my desk. At 1:30 p.m. I was sitting with my laptop, setting sail under a new masthead. The next morning, I got up and taught yoga. Life moved forward.

Still, Culver City Crossroads has a way to go to reach our ideals. A few examples of success stand out in my mind, but none so clearly as Baby Colin. When we asked for some help for a little boy who had been relocated without so much as a box of diapers, help poured in. The awesome Culver City Moms Club gave clothes, toys, and of course, diapers. As of this writing, Colin is doing great, “growing like a weed in the sunshine” according to his family, all of who are grateful to Culver City for the generosity and the love.

At the other end of the road, the death of Albert Vera was a huge event for the whole community, and many of those who wrote in had memories to share. We were glad to provide a place to share them. While Vera is gone, his influences are still felt in the community, and there will undoubtedly be more news on that next year.

In the 20th Century, a newsmagazine would simply publish facts (this happened, that happened) perhaps a few columns of opinion (here’s what I think about what happened.) The idea here is to give people a place to connect, to find out what is going on in the community and what they can do to make a difference. Make it happen. Healthy School Lunches by Maggie Memmott Walsh is one example of how to do just that.

We have a good community, and the way to keep it good is to keep it growing. We want your words, your photos, your videos and your comments. We want you to feel impelled to get involved. We will keep changing until we find a flavor that’s perfect.

We also need your support. While the Google ads are cool and fun, we would like all the advertising to reflect local businesses. We do get donations from readers, but only a small percentage of our audience has contributed. While we are considering delivering to your in-box on a subscription basis, we don’t want to limit readers to those who subscribe. For now, we will stay on the honor system. This is an issue that is changing throughout our culture, and as the 21st Century decides how it will support online content, we invite Culver City to be in the vanguard. Like the Bike and Walk master plan, like the AVPA,
we can give the world a great example – local news getting local support. For all of our other local media that have corporate backing, community support is just frosting. For us, it’s the whole cake.

So, happy birthday to Crossroads. It’s been quite a year.  Now we have 731 posts.

What a wonderful world.

photo from JT Luna

Just when I thought Ballona Creek was going to bust out of her concrete bed, the Goddess Iris showed up in her finest. While many parts of LA County are still deluged (and the rain has begun again in the darkness) this was a fine way to end the afternoon in Culver City.

If you listen very closely, you can hear Judy Garland saying “A place where there isn’t any trouble…Is there such a place, Toto? “  (Editor’s note- this ain’t it, but we love our myths and our movies.) Stay warm and dry.

When I was awakened on Nov. 23 in the early morning hours by a disturbance down the street, I thought it was just another one of the common, middle of the night disturbances that I’ve lived with for years. When I heard days later that this was a bust and not just some rowdy customers, I was relieved. Maybe the drug problem would finally be resolved.

Just about everyone in my neighborhood has been irritated, annoyed and outraged for years at this drug dealer, but the frequent phone calls to the Culver City Police Department have been fruitless. We have been told that they are “keeping on eye” on the situation. Allowing a meth lab to stay business for years involves either compliance or corruption, and someone needs to answer for this.

The reason that this is opinion and not news is that I don’t yet have the news. There is no confirmation of the arrests, which supposedly included about a dozen minors. People who said they could be quoted have requested not to be quoted. I have been unable to speak with anyone involved with the raid, and the Culver City Police have no comment. For that matter, I have no empirical evidence that my neighbor is in any way breaking the law. As for anecdotal evidence, I have a pile of it.

That does not rate as journalism. But it is worthy of a thought.

Perhaps I am also guilty of complaisance, as I have been living with this situation for years. Since I am not in law enforcement, and I think some of our laws are pretty darn stupid, I try to work on a platform of “live and let live.” But if you are using meth, you are not living. You barely exist. You have signed yourself over to addiction. Call it tweak, crank, speed or crystal, it’s just a powdered form of toxic evil. You don’t have meth; meth has you. Sadly, I know all about it.

I was irate that Prop. 19 did not pass, and feels that the whole stupid system of drug prohibition needs a complete overhaul. I graduated from high school with the generation that changed the word “party” from a noun to a verb. I lived in Venice Beach for more than 15 years. I am happy to say that I have not seen it all, but I have seen more than enough. There is world of difference between a dead plant in a baggie that facilitates laughter and relaxation, and a bootleg chemical compound that causes violence and insanity. While my drug of choice these days is dry Chardonnay, and the occasional cognac, I am reminded that they were illegal once, too.

While meth was never on my menu of choices, I have friends who lost years of their lives to this addiction. These were smart, ambitious people  who just wanted to squeeze a few more hours out of a day. It is a physically addictive substance, like opiates or caffeine, and if you think you are just going to stop tomorrow, your brain will like to inform you that you can’t. What was only alluded to in the recent AVPA production of the Laramie Project was that the boys who tied Mathew Shepard to a fence and beat him into a coma had been on a meth binge for days. If you went to look up “crimes related to crystal meth” you will come up with a chapter of horrors that Stephen King couldn’t match.

While I can hardly imagine that our community could possibly offer our youth more than the sports, theater, music and art that we have in place, there are still kids in this town who are so lonely, so hurt, so messed up or so hopeless that they choose to use drugs.

While the address under suspicion was dark for a while, I was not at all surprised to find that only a few days later, the car was back in the driveway, and the tv set inside the house was on. Just like the last big bust several years ago, I imagine it won’t be long before they are back in business. If you want to purchase a dead plant in a baggie, I have no objection at all. If you want to purchase powdered toxic evil, you need to get help, and you need to stop. Not tomorrow, yesterday.

Our community is also entitled to know what’s going on. In a city this size with two newspapers and three websites, we should be able to get information that allows us to know that we are safe – or that we are not. We need news to be able to know that our children are safe- or not. When all official information is “no comment” then it requires editorial comment.

What I see as the real tragedy of the drug problem is that we refuse to distinguish between the benign drugs and the lethal ones. As with the lack of information, “admitting you have a problem is the first step.”

For the last two years, Culver City has revisited the death of Police Lt. Curtis Massey annually. At this moment, not much else would persuade all those police officers to even be in the same room with Police Chief Don Pedersen. Our newly elected Congresswoman Karen Bass was present to offer a tribute. While Massey’s anniversary will not fall until Jan. 28, by that time there will be a sign on the freeway where Massey died, dedicating that stretch of the road to his memory. Is anyone familiar with the idea of irony?

It might because Bass makes me queasy, or that Pedersen makes me queasy, but the whole thing made me feel like throwing up.

If you were killed in a factory, would you want a stretch of the production line named after you? Really?

While I don’t agree with most of what the Mormon Church stands for, they do have an interesting take on why their Christian Church does not use the symbol of the cross. The explanation I have heard from several Mormons asks “If you had a friend who was stabbed to death, would you remember him with a knife?” This is in complete sympathy with a quote from the infamous comedian Lenny Bruce, who was not a Mormon, but noticed, “If Jesus had been killed twenty years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses.”

Because Massey was killed on a freeway, we’re going to name an overpass for him?
I think I’m going to be carsick.

Which brings me to Karen Bass, who certainly did not originate the idea of putting up signs on the freeway “In Memorial.” I don’t know who did, but I will speculate that they spent way, way too much time on the freeway, thinking about death.

I am stuck with the notion that Culver City and Karen Bass are like two strangers in an elevator, who find themselves with some time to pass, and nothing much to say to each other.

When Bass was running for office this past year, I was at an event where she offered to answer questions from the audience. I was sitting next to Rosie La Briola, who candidly observed that we had not seen much of Diane Watson during her term of office. “What are you going to do to change that?” she asked Bass, “How will you do things differently so that we know you are working for us?”

Even the most polished professional politician occasionally has a moment where the mask slips. For just an instant, with a look of embarrassed honesty in her eyes, Bass dropped her persona. Shaking it off quickly, she took a breath, forced a big smile, and changed the tone to one of joking apology. “Well, you know, it’s a long trip around from D.C., that’s a lot of miles, and I know Diane put on a lot of miles, and you still can’t see everyone, and you still can’t do all you want to do. So, I will do my best. I don’t know that I can do more than Diane, did, I surely will try.”

Rosie and I exchanged cynical glances, and sighed. The subtext didn’t need to be articulated. Yeah, well, we’d vote for her, but not with any enthusiasm. Wouldn’t be seeing much of her anyway.

I can certainly this freeway memorial for Massey as a gesture, an attempt to make some sort of elevator conversation on the congresswoman’s part. But like an awkward comment offered simply to break the silence, it falls flat.

At the council chambers, I could see the police force eyeing Chief Pedersen and imagined what they might be thinking. Dragging Massey back for another official ceremony as s way of waving off the critics, if even for a few hours, showing himself as a stalwart pillar of the CCPD, honoring the fallen hero, Pedersen was in the right place at the right time. Lots of folks in the chamber probably thought he was doing the right thing. I didn’t.

The Culver City Council members, who at least had the good taste not to instigate any of this, listened to the proclamation being read, and posed for photos, and eventually got back to the agenda for the evening.

In the mystery novel version (or action-thriller screenplay) there would have to be a whispered conversation between Bass and Pedersen, agreeing to use the anniversary of Massey’s death for their own villainous purposes. In reality, Bass and Pedersen are probably equally unaware of and unconcerned about each other. Our police will have to continue to work for someone they think is a bad boss, a bad cop and a bad guy. The congressional representative will have a lot more to deal with than putting up a sign on a freeway, just to make conversation with some well-placed constituents.

Lenny Bruce also noted “Satire is tragedy plus time.”

I have had an amazing relationship with Curtis Massey, although I doubt we ever met. I had just started at the Culver City News when he was killed. In local news business, it was like learning to swim by leaping off the high dive into deep water. I got a lot of compliments on how the paper covered the story. I can credit Lt. Massey with teaching me to swim, fast.

When I parted company with the Culver City News almost a year later, I spent some time thinking about that cold afternoon at Holy Cross Cemetery. I thought about all the police who turned out. I thought about community and service. I thought about ethics and honor.

At this point, I can only wonder what Massey would think of the whole deal. To me, it’s still not something to laugh about. I’ve lost too many loved ones to unexpected and sudden deaths to ever find it funny. But if you were killed in a car crash, would you want a sign with your name on it on the freeway? Really?

The deed is done. Bass gets her official good will gesture, and Pederson gets another 20 minutes to pretend that anyone on the police force respects him.

While I do hope is isn’t untimely or violent, after I go I think I would like to have a sunflower planted next to a bike path or maybe a playground– please, no plaque.