Althouse

"... like ‘What are we going to do with this person?’ Or sometimes it is a look of sympathy. I am just so tired of being treated like a second-class citizen."

... the lunch crowd is rolling in.

... the lunch group is assembling.

... you can talk about whatever you like.

The photograph is from 2007, explained here.

And remember to consider using The Althouse Amazon Portal when you've got shopping to do.

"Raise your hand if this has happened to you: your parents/siblings/friends are coming to visit you in Los Angeles and despite having a full and happy day-to-day life here, you’re not sure what to do with them when they arrive."

So that's about L.A., and maybe it's a problem that's especially trying in L.A., but it's a generic problem. And it's not just a problem about how a resident deals with (and hears from) his parents (or siblings/friends). It's a problem you have with yourself when you travel.

Figuring out how to provide an authentic experience that isn’t challenging for visitors who aren’t intimately familiar with this city’s quirks is a true local struggle.... For my parents' most recent stay, I wanted to switch things up, focus less on tourist attractions and more on the places I find most interesting in Los Angeles.

See what I mean? When you travel, you don't know enough to get to the authentic experience (a phrase I, absurdly, feel I should put in quotes but cannot, not without creating the wrong impression, that I'm snarking on the idea of authenticity). You may wish you could just mesh with the citizenry, but you can't. Even if you wanted to avoid the tourist attractions, you're aware that you've got limited time and you feel you ought to be using it, consuming something. You can't just stay in and read one day. Every part of the day, it seems, must be optimized for getting at this place you've gotten to. If you do fill that time or some of it with the famous attractions, you can feel that you're not truly in the place, that it might even be better looking at photographs of the place, because the photographs are framed to exclude the people thronging about, the people who are not even the people of the place you came to see. They are outsiders, outsiders like you. If you want less of you, stay home, where you are the only you there.

Now that you've made it through my Paragraph of Assorted Musings, let me assure you that there's a funny enough list of "What I told them"/"What they said" items at the link. One of the items is Intelligentsia — "It’s a very nice place with kind-of annoying people and great drinks" — which is one of the places my son took me when I visited him in L.A. back in 2008. I don't remember what he told me or what I said, but I do remember taking what I think of as one of my best photographs:

I'd never noticed the collision of the 2 dreaded days before 2009:

Because it's a risky place out there. For example, I was out driving, hundreds of miles from home on Friday the 13th, and I blithely made a right turn and drove a half a block before I saw the oncoming traffic in my lane. I quickly made another right turn at the corner, and immediately saw the police car lights in my rear view mirror. The cop — with his beautiful blue eyes — was very handsome — very heart-of-the-heartland handsome. I effused "I'm so sorry." He asked us where we were going. I didn't wisecrack, "the wrong way, apparently."

We said where we were going, and afterward, I wondered what the hell difference did it make where we were going? Nosy cop. Nosy handsome cop. Nosy adorable cop with brilliant blue eyes. I'm theorizing that he asked because the thing is to ask anything to get the driver talking so that words might be slurred, incoherence demonstrated, or alcohol smelled. It's not a speeding ticket he'd like to give me, it's a DUI. And maybe the whole point of making that street 1-way is to net drunk drivers. Why was the cop right there? I bet every 10 minutes, somebody goes the wrong way at that turn, each one a potential DUI, and that was a net that I slithered through. But maybe Mr. Handsome Blue-Eyed Cop let me off because he liked the place we said we were going. And I got lucky that way on Friday the 13th.

No, that was not my first post about falling in love with Meade. This was. No, actually, this. Or was it "Record nails broken in car crash." No, it was "Althouse on the road":



In the comments, AJ Lynch said: "Althouse is...looking for love in all the wrong places. Heh. Be safe!" Yes, be very careful! You never know where your next wrong turn is or who might come tromping through the brush:

Open thread. Write whatever you want.

And if you have any shopping to do, please use the Althouse Amazon portal.

... you can talk about whatever you want.

... you can talk about whatever you want.

Originally blogged on May 11, 2008, under the heading "The Althousity of Hope." 

I wrote on February 14, 2008 in "Althouse eats chocolate, tweaks photographs, watches 'American Idol' and fails to keep all her body parts out of the aggressive view of the fisheye lens."



I was alone on Valentine's Day, watching TV in what was my temporary home in Brooklyn that academic year. Who knows what the future will bring — which way the wind will blow?

A year later, my Valentine's Day was not spent alone with a TV and a computer screen, but with Meade, who would materialize from my strange, half-lonely relationship with the computer. Michael Johns went on to finish 8th in the singing competition, and, yesterday he died — of a blood clot in his ankle. He was only 35.

Too late, my time has come...

... yellow.

There were lots of people strolling about in the Arboretum this Sunday, Mother's Day.



The daffodils knew how to behave as if it's really Spring, but most of the trees were bare.



The magnolias had gotten the memo:



Yay, magnolias:

.... let's do the lavender twist.

In the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness.





Yesterday in Montana.