Free spaces

Back from ten days in southern California including several in a part of the west San Fernando Valley developed about the time I was born.  Walks around the neighborhood gave me opportunity to see how the classic suburb has developed: the landscaping in some yards is out-of-control, way beyond what anyone anticipated; most houses are altered so that the original similarity is hidden behind new garages, changed roof lines, expanded pavement, distinctive plantings, and the like.  The basic grid pattern, interrupted by a few curves, is there, but it provides a big structure that one follows to other neighborhoods.  Inside this one, there is something closer to cozy.

I know that the ideal of the fifties was a sort of free life that included a single family house, a car, a citrus tree in the yard, etc.  We'll read more about this is later chapters of Jim Cullen's American Dream: A Short History of An Idea that Shaped a Nation (Oxford, 2004).  It is a dream that is easy to deride as trivial or shallow.  What I saw reminded me that over time people put down roots and make a place their own.  Also that over time cracks can appear.  In fact, since I was near Northridge, many of these houses were rebuilt following a major earthquake about 20 years ago. 

Another foundation of the Southern California suburb was the automobile.  (Foreshadowing Am Con 201 and the model-T Ford.)  Nonetheless, I spent a great day taking the growing LA public transit system from the West Valley to Union Station downtown and then to Venice Beach.  Yeah, it took all day and I got to see lots of people.  And I was not caught in a traffic jam as I was the next day when my brother and I drove to SanDiego, down the 5 at about 30 miles an hour.

Of interest to us: a 60+ woman on the Orange Line rapid transit bus.  She told me that she would never have known about this great system if she had not had had her driver's license revoked.  Then she mentioned that she is interested in learning more about how government works.  "All those John Birch folks," she said, "understand all of that."  I pointed her toward the League of Women Voters.

so . . . freedom to belong in a space and make it your own; freedom of movement; and freedom to participate.  How do these line up with Foner's categories?

DeAne