"Shame on Ceasar! ... Seniors! ... Cedars! I meant Cedars!"

A couple weeks ago for one of our community nights we attended a candlelit vigil/protest of the closing of the psych ward at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in L.A. This is the latest in a trend of psychiatric services being cut across the state, including MediCal cutting much of its coverage for psych services. Most of us work with persons with mental illness in some capacity or another, so we see daily how essential these outpatient and inpatient services are. I'm happy that one of the speakers at the vigil made the point of saying that without psychiatric care, many people would end up in prison or on the streets. Unfortunately, the decision has already been made, and plans are already being carried out to close the 60-bed psych ward at Cedars, but we attended the vigil to help make the point that mental health is just as important as any other piece of healthcare. As a psychology major, it's natural for me to consider mental illness as a part of overall health, but there is certainly still a stigma attached to disorders of the brain.

After the vigil, we walked around the massive block of buildings that makes up Cedars Sinai, chanting "Cedars must reconsider!" and "Shame on Cedars!" Try repeating that for about 20 minutes at a high volume. I kept saying things like "Shame on Ceasar!' and "Shame on seniors!" And my voice was pretty hoarse at work the  next day...

Beautiful Beaches

These are the moments when I think I could live in California forever...

...don't worry, mom and dad, I'll come home eventually.

Hello, January.

Happy new year!

Beautiful

Just a friendly reminder on the side of a building on Main Street in Santa Monica (which I pass on my Monday rose-pick-up route).

International Human Rights Day

Yesterday (December 10) was International Human Rights Day. We went to a demonstration put on by the L.A. Human Right to Housing Collective. I urge you to consider: Do you look at housing as a universal human right? It is an easy thing to keep out of mind, since basic shelter is so taken for granted in our lives. Yet, in L.A. County alone, over 50,000 sleep on the streets every night because of the incredible lack of affordable housing.

"Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, closes to home -- so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any map of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person: the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world."

-Eleanor Roosevelt in remarks at the United Nations, March 27, 1958

Things that have happened

Sorry for neglecting you, blog readers. My only explanation for my absence is that I got hooked on the show Parks and Recreation (go watch it immediately), so every time I opened the internet to write a blog post I got sucked into the next episode...it's a wonder I didn't fail out of college. Here's a crash course on the mid-October to mid-November happenings of my life: 

We went to San Diego for Halloween weekend.

The seven casamates of CMC dressed up as loose interpretations of the seven days of the week. I was Wednesday (from the Adams Family).

San Diego was beautiful (especially Balboa Park, pictured below), and further convinced me that L.A. is ugly.

But then Los Angeles tried to make us think it was pretty with this sunset on our drive back.

On Halloween night, we walked down Santa Monica Blvd. in West Hollywood with a couple thousand other Los Angelenos in costume.

Jackie and I "volunteered" at a gala benefitting a fellow L.A. JV's agency, which actually turned into us just being the youngest, least-wealthy guests at a ritzy country club in Pasadena.

My parents visited! In typical Arnold fashion, we spent the weekend eating good food and drinking good wine.

We visited a winery in Temecula.

And drove along the coast to the Mission at San Juan Capistrano.

My parents took the whole casa out to a Korean BBQ restaurant, where the waitress shot us disdainful looks all night long for being Korean BBQ beginners. But we didn't care because the meat was so. flavorful. 

We met with some of Casa Ita Ford for a hike near Pasadena.

Other news-in-brief: St. Joseph Center had a staff-wide retreat, where I was reminded of all the great things going on at our agency. We did a few 5K walks for local organizations, including the food bank I visit every week for Bread and Roses. We sent a new class of almost-graduates from the Culinary Training Program to their externships. And Bread and Roses is getting ready for a Thanksgiving feast on Tuesday!

Oh, and the Packers are still undefeated, which I will now enjoy from the Packers bar I found in West L.A.

autumnal imagination

Fall is my favorite season. Sophomore year of high school, I had to defend fall as the best season in a three-minute impromptu speech, and I've never looked back. Spring in D.C. is pretty great (cherry blossoms!), but my springtime allergies keep it in second place.

Unfortunately, fall does not exist in L.A. Palm trees don't change colors, it's too warm to drink hot apple cider without sweating, and I've been told I won't be able to wear my fall clothing until December or January...sigh. So my fellow fall-loving casamates and I have taken it upon ourselves to create fall in Los Angeles...

- I don't pay attention to the weather and wear my fall wardrobe anyways.

- Jackie and I have kept our calendar on September instead of switching it to October because it has nice Georgetown foliage shots.

- I think the sadness about not having football in my life has been building up over the past four years (Georgetown won a total of maybe three football games during my undergraduate career). But I've been extremely excited (and potentially annoyingly enthusiastic) about the fall sports action. Packers are undefeated, Brewers are stumbling but still were in the NLCS, and I just enjoy the fact that Michigan beat Notre Dame even if they lost to State and probably don't deserve their current ranking.

- Emily and I make a point of searching out city blocks with foliage on our afternoon runs. This has been our most successful find thus far:

- We went to the Hollywood Forever Cemetery and watched Poltergeist with a couple hundred of our closest friends (and a BYOB picnic) to get in the Halloween spirit.

 


- And I look at pictures like this one from my mom to remind myself that somewhere out there leaves are changing and people are putting corn stalks by mailboxes...

On the other hand, if fall weather takes place during "winter" in L.A., this means the Advent/Christmas season will be even more fantastic. I love snow, but a week of it in Wisconsin will probably suffice.

H O L L Y W O O D

This past weekend, we explored Hollywood on our way to a BBQ hosted by one of the other JV houses. Since we were avoiding museums with entrance fees, we just wandered up and down Hollywood Boulevard and admired the walk of fame and the handprints of stars outside the Chinese Theatre.

Some of my favorites:

  

I was back in West Hollywood on Monday at the House of Blues for an Obama fundraiser/rally. I wouldn't say I'm his biggest supporter of late, but when someone offers me a free pass to a $250 event that gets me 20-25 feet from the president of the United States, I accept. I volunteered to help staff the event after I met a classmate at a Georgetown Alumni Association event who is currently working full-time for the Obama re-election campaign of Southern California.

My job as a volunteer was to be a gatekeeper of a staircase for VIPs only, which happened to be only feet from the stage...

The event was emcee'd by Jesse Tyler Ferguson (Mitchell on "Modern Family"), and there were performances by the Gay Men's Chorus of L.A. and the rapper B.o.B. (who actually has some songs you might recognize) to warm up the crowd. I'm really not sure what target demographic they were going for with this event, but it seemed to work.

So because my fellow stair-guarder and I spent a fair amount of time with Jeff the Secret Service guy (Is his name really Jeff? We'll never know...), we were allowed to sneak into the front section before President Obama came in. Not a bad vantage point:

  

  

The president spoke about the economy and the jobs bill he introduced, about his campaign for re-election, and about the 13 months until then. The overarching theme was that the vision he put forth in 2008 is the same vision he has for the country today. There were a few jabs at the GOP, but it was primarily a positive message directed at a lot of frustrated people. (Speaking of frustration, folks were paying $38,000 for the fundraising event that followed this one later in the evening; meanwhile, people are homeless and hungry down the street.)

The bad part was the commute, which was easy on the way there when streets were open, but quite an adventure on the way home when my phone was dead and I was wandering through West Hollywood...whoops. I knew where I was the entire time but just couldn't find any buses that were running, and in the end it only took me an hour and a half to get home. However, taking the bus did afford me the opportunity to do more sightseeing than I could while driving, and I can definitely understand why people who live in West Hollywood/Beverly Hills like L.A. It is a very different Los Angeles than the one I work in every day...