I agree with other classmates comments that Deverell's presentation could have been more visually intriguing. I think the adding a visual aspect to his lecture would have kept the audience involved and attentive. When he was introduced as a professor I assumed he would deliver his talk as though he was teaching a class rather than a book reading. Although visual aids would have helped to support his lecture, I thought overall he had a wealth of knowledge about the history of the American West to contribute and delivered his lecture in a clear and concise manner. I was especially intrigued by the piece about how Yosemite and other National parks were created post civil war. It is amazing to me that such beautiful landmarks have a history of being linked to such trauma.  Another aspect that I liked was how you could sense his enthusiasm and passion for understanding the history of the American West and his excitement for the future. He made me excited about the future of Los Angeles and reminded that a fruitful future is to come.

I read a biography of a silent film star not to long ago; and in this tome she said that the talkies should have come before the silent pictures.  How about this idea to push this theme further, the lecture we saw was all killer and no filler (to steal a line form Jerry Lee Lewis).  Does that help you see where I am about to go?  I think these pertinent ideas summate our last lecture.  I think that what made this lecture so informative and intriguing is its simplicity.  We were not distracted from the point by shiny baubles and bright lights so we got the significance and the reality of history. 

Deverell did a very good job of pulling together tidbits of LA history from the 19^th century to illustrate that we have a past.  This also gives us promise.  If we would just use this past, LA might be able to realize its future in the present because of what we can learn from our history.

            Another important thing that was addressed was Deverell’s bringing up the idea that LA does not have a compiled over view history.  This is what I think is the most significant.  I really think this is why so many people neglect, ignore and disparage LA so vehemently.  People tend to hate and or attack what they don’t know and understand.  How can you understand LA if it lacks a story?  This is an important idea that I hope will be remedied soon.

Tough I'd have to say that I agree with some of the other students in saying that I think Deverell's presentation would have been better had he had some maps or population charts, I very much so enjoyed his talk. I had kind of found it strange when I saw the book list for this class and I saw that none of the texts dealt with the Los Angeles of the 19th century at all. My personal curiousities draw me much more toward that topic than all of the urban planning and politics that so many books cover. Though I was aware of the dates of both California's entrance into the US and those of the Civil War, I hadn't really remembered that California was a state during the war. Just as so much of the population from the previous generation was affected by the Vietnam War, the Civil War would have, most certainly, been on everyone's minds...even if it was fought a whole 2000 miles away.
I was a little disappointed that Deverell didn't talk more about the origins of all of the people coming to California. Were they primarily Southern, or first generation immigrants from Europe, etc.?

I appreciated the format of this presentation--a "debate"--but I was a little confused as to what, exactly the debate was over. I firmly understood Dear's point of view and arguments, but I didn't really get the sense that Cuff disagreed, or that she was necessarily arguing against his points.

It seems like Los Angeles, and many other cities in the West (and the South), are a slightly different animal from their very inception than the large New England cities. Most of the cities in the West were not built around manufacturing and industry, but rather around agriculture. While I suppose that Boston and New York were also begun as agricultural centers in the early 18th century, their most important functions were industrial pretty early on. Agriculture is by its very nature a spread out, "sprawling" enterprise, so it is only natural that there would exist several "hubs" of activity.

This got me thinking about the whole sustainability problem, from a side that we sometimes forget. If the "city" is going to overtake so much agricultural land, where are the city's residents going to get their food? Sure, we could always import it from somewhere else (like Switzerland or Alaska), but that is only going to make the oil exploitation problem bigger...It is strange to think that in 1940 Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball spent their honeymoon out in the country in a little town called Pomona! There is even an episode of I Love Lucy where the four main characters are visiting Los Angeles and they go on a trip to "the farm country" in Pomona, and Fred comments that he would like to maybe buy some orange groves out past that city. Ricky then comments... "What in the world is there way out past Pomona?" (I am paraphrasing...couldn't find the exact quotes)

Another point that I found kind of interesting is that Dear used the Coachella valley as a positive example of this "city of the future." I don't know if he has ever spent a lot of time there or not, but I know that the Coachella Valley is an area with almost not "industry" (other than tourism) and so a a huge portion of its residents actually commute to San Bernardino or Riverside...probably not what Dear has in mind for a model city.

I have spent much of my life living in semi-rural areas, so I come at this situation from a different angle than many. My thoughts are always drawn to the actual people living in the subrubs. These people that are doing the best they can to take care of their families, hoping to give their children as many opportunities as possible. We tend to vilianize the suburbanites, but I think that is extremely unfair, as they are doing the best they can given their circumstances to keep their families safe and fed.

I thought it was extremely ironic that both Dear and Cuff reside in Santa Monica. Both Cuff spoke strongly ill of those folks that say "not in my backyard" in regard to the poor and homeless, yet they both live in one of the most haute cities in the area. I also thought it was ironic that Cuff named several cities that have a "sense of neighborhood"--Santa Monica, West Hollywood, Pasadena, Claremont--all of which are enclaves for the wealthy (which might as well be walled of from the surrounding communities) as good examples of togetherness and positive cty structure.

These two presenters were the most informative so far.  They gave the audience huge amounts of information about LA, how it was layed out, and how it could and should grow.  I believe that they gave us more pertinent information pertaining to our study of LA than any of the other speakers.

            I found the topic of fragmentation very intriguing.  The old way of cities growing from the inside out seems to only survive wholely in areas of New England and Europe. (i.e. NYC & Paris).  A new pattern of an outward to inward growth  seems to be more prominent in modern America.  I lived in one of these “New Cities” for five years; before I moved back out here to California.  In Florida all of the fastest growing and increasingly important cities are folowing this pattern.  The Tampa Bay area (where I lived), Orlando and Miami are all growing rapidly, like LA, in this outside in fashion.  These huge new cities that keep growing in leaps and bounds without having a “dowtntown” where the majority people go to work seem to be the most thriving in America.  In these “new cities,” people go everywhere and anywhere to work.  Dowtowns are now nothing more than shopping mall re-creations of a picturesque past.  There seems to be no center of economic or political power anymore. 

            I had never really thought about this topic until this lecture. Well, mainly because I have only lived in these “new cities” and never in the “old.”  However, after this lecture I am going try and find more information about this topic

I enjoyed Isoyama's presentation more the other two presenters. I felt that he connected with the audience and was much more entertaining than the others. I also enjoyed that his art was so positive. I was initially intrigued by Flick's ideas and experiments with "chance operations," but as he spoke his "agenda" (which seems to me the exact opposite point of using chance operations in art) became clearer, and it turned me off. I was unclear as to exactly what Ethington contributed-- aside from his outright imitations of Flick's photographs. I was also wondering, as Ian asked, why Flick chose the two particular streets he did for his subject. I realized, later, that these two streets (Central and Pico) serve the politics of the project much better than something like Sepulveda, Sunset or Santa Monica would.

            This project, like its name sake, is impossible to grasp.  I am impressed by the sheer scope of it (wanting to photograph all of LA); but I am at a loss to know what to do with it right now in this early stage.  This multimedia web site is a database of photos by Robert Flick and “historical commentary” by Philip Ethington all organized online by Tomo Isoyama.  The focus is, of course, Los Angeles; in particular Pico Blvd and Central Ave.  This very fascinating venture’s use is hard to conceive in this nascent stage.  Right now it seems to be a good source of two things.  First, this site is a wonderful source for pictures of Los Angeles.  Second, this site can be used a way of investigating ethnicity in Los Angeles along Pico and Central.  However, as the project grows it could and will expand into unknown territory.

            As far as the presentation went I was only impressed with Tomo.  Tomo Isoyama’s work and presentation I liked.  I like pop and folk art and his pieces were very intriguing.  Flick was a flop as far as I was concerned.  At the beginning anyway, I thought he was a boring presenter that had little to offer.  However, I thought that during the question and answer period Flick really shined and we really got a glimpse of what he was trying to convey.  Ethington was okay, but it wasn’t ground shaking.  I enjoyed his presentation, in part I guess because of it being history and me being a historian.  He too was good in the question and answer time as well.      

I thought the Ghost Trajectories was a very interesting way of presenting photography. I liked how Flick referred to photography as an "evolving narrative"; it really helped to understand the concept behind his work. I really liked the piece he did on Manhattan Beach and how the horizon tied the whole work together, it seemed really innovative and creative. I feel indifferent about the "video drive by" photography on Pico Blvd. It was interesting such that history was provided with the images and we were able to see if from the driver’s perspective but this seems like something anyone could do. It just seemed to take away from photography to me and the beauty that is captured by still shots. I liked Isoyama's work and could see myself buying one of his pieces but his talk regarding photography and LA did not seem to flow well with the other two speakers. I did not necessarily disagree with his arguments; they just did not seem to be in line with Flick and Ethington’s overall framework or at least the way they were presented. Overall, I thought the idea was interesting and many of the pieces presented were amazing. I think it is a very interesting historical spin on photography and art and intrigues the viewer to interpret the images from a more guided perspective.

 

Being a historian Professor Gonzales-Day didn’t exactly shock me with what he had to say in his lecture about lynching.  I have studied lynching and was saddened to find out that it has been around in North America since the whites began settling.  There is an even more disturbing aspect that goes with this; it still happens.  Not with the frequency of the past but it still emerges in isolated cases in America.  Lynching’s heyday was from the 1870s through the 1940s, but it was around before this time frame and afterwards as well.  The South West was very fertile soil for this activity.

            I have to agree with several of my other colleagues and say that I was very disappointed with his presentation; it didn’t come off as well polished at all.  First of all he knew he was talking for a LA lecture series and he mentioned the LA area a few times, and very rarely in more detail than an off handed comment.  He did bring up one case in particular and talked about it, but with him continually mentioning how many lynchings took place here you would think that his lecture could have reflected that.  The thing that bothered me the most was how he didn’t talk about the significance of lynching and how this kind of activity shaped the American mind and society.  This activity left many marks and scars on the American minds of all the races here to witness/experience this activity.

On the positive side, he has done very good job of compiling a great deal of important information to be studied and thought about.  He has greatly contributed to a very arduous, painful and sensitive topic by finding and organizing this data.

With our first two lectures in this series I think that we have definitely gotten a feel for the “mob.”  With Wanda and Ken you can kind of get a feeling for what it has been like for non-whites and poor or “below-average” whites out west.  The LA experience is not all Sunshine and milk and honey.

I appreciated Gonzales-Day's presentation very much. I, too, never realized the presence and extent of lynching in the "Old West". As part of my dissertation investigations I have poked around in the world of the Wetsren United States in the 19th century, but I've never found much on the things he presented. I was definitely surprised!
One thing that I appreciated about his presentation was that he was not confrontational, or vengeful about his data. I thought that was healthy and productive. Not that I condone in any way what happened to those 300-something people, but I did appreciate that Gonzales-Day expressed sympathy for both the lynched and the lynchers. I thought that Gonzales-Day's demeanor was professional, but personal, and that this made his presentation and artwork more effective.
It is sad that we erase so much of our histories, but it seems only natural, to a certain extent. How many of us try to forget about or past sins, and try to move on as if they hadn't happened? I am not saying it is right, but...