LA en vie

The 405: Land of the Free?

La tablée

La tablée is one of those French words you can translate easily into English, but that English doesn't use. That kind of word usually means a cultural difference.

It means a tableful of people.

At this time of year, Paris is softer, slower. The city empties out, and the children vanish. Everyone is at the beach, in the mountains, or at the maison de famille in the countryside, sometimes a large house shared by generations of the same family.

Lunch is outside whenever possible, and everyone eats together. In France, summer is a time for cousins to meet, brothers and sisters to catch up, little children to joke with their great-aunts and great-uncles.

Do you detect a nostalgic tone to my voice?

Here in L.A., no one does this. The summer is work-work-work as usual.

When people here take their one or two weeks a year, they have to choose between seeing their families, usually far-flung, or going on vacation.

Americans have no time off.

The homeless hikers

In the morning after the school run, I often go for a hike in the Santa Monica mountains. These are one of the glorious things about living in Los Angeles.

"Here, the weather never stops you from doing what you want," said a mountain biker friend. "You'll get used to it. You'll never want to go back to Paris."

This morning I hiked up Temescal Canyon as far as the waterfall. It was dawn. The only sounds were my own breathing and my footsteps, the birds singing, and the rushing water in the little creek. Spring flowers were everywhere, and the sun was shining. I was alone. It was hard to believe that a city of many millions was close by.

A blond woman in sweatpants came down the trail clutching a water bottle. She wished me good morning. An Asian-American man passed me ten minutes later. He nodded hello. Except for his clothes, he could have been a Malibu millionaire.

The homeless who live in the mountains.

The drinking age

N had a big party and the cops came... which apparently, if you're a college kid, is a good thing-- the party is instantly more fun to talk about the next day.

These were mellow cops. They only asked for the music to be turned down ten minutes early. But the kids were prepared. Everyone had been ID'd, and the over-21s had a special bracelet they had to show each time they got a drink.

A few minutes after the party started, I went out of the tent and saw a slim girl with long blond hair, in a white dress, lying face down in the dirt. Two or three other girls hovered around her. "What's going on?" I asked, very alarmed.

"Oh, she's just had too much to drink."

"Already? But the bus just got here!"

One of the girls put her arm around my shoulders. "I know it's strange for  you, but we're actually used to it. She's a freshman."

"It's called 'pre-gaming,'" another one said. "They're not allowed to drink, so they drink in their rooms ahead of time. It's much worse that way." They took her off to the bathroom. She was really a very pretty girl, but she didn't look so hot with her head in the toilet.

After the party, a lot of purses were left behind. N was looking through one of them to find the owner. "Cell phone? Keys? Oh, here's her wallet. Hey, I didn't invite anyone named Natalie Rothschild!"

"Fake ID," said someone else, snatching it away. "Oh, look, here's her real one."

N, of course, grew up in France and has been drinking wine since he was 15 or 16. The French attitude is that wine is part of life, goes with food, a simple pleasure. The French don't drink much hard liquor, but recently the young people have become very fond of beer, which has the vignerons worried.

I can't even remember the last time I saw a French person visibly drunk in public. (Am I idealizing France? Maybe I just don't get out enough.) The French don't segregate drinking adults from families as the British do (a practice I believe seriously contributes to drunkenness in the U.K.; it's a lot harder to think getting drunk is cool when little kids and grandmothers are watching you). In France, young people go out to cafes in big groups, not to bars to get drunk. Drinking is just a normal part of life, and not drinking is okay too.

Seems healthier to me.

The homeless

Los Angeles has a lot of homeless people. More than I've ever seen before. Some of them are young, handsome men, slim, brown-skinned and blond from their life on the beach. Here, you can live outside all year long, and I imagine most of them are mentally ill or borderline. It's heartbreaking to think of the human waste of these lives.

Gangbusters

"I've had a hard week," said my handsome young landlord. He had come over to fix my garage door and actually started laughing when he saw how easy that was.

"Why was your week so hard?" I asked. He is a district attorney.

"Gangs. I've been dealing with gangs all week. The trouble is, the witnesses are all terrified. And the thing is, they're right to be."

Virginia Tech shootings: Guns and freedom

The students and teachers killed at Virginia Tech were from every race and religion. The U.S. is still a melting pot.

This tragedy is inevitably seen as inevitable by Americans, and as American by foreigners. The South Korean shooter would not have been able to buy guns so easily in his own country. People kill people-- but guns kill more of them.

People in other countries do not understand the American affection for the Second Amendment.

The second student killed by the gunman was Ryan Clark, known as "Stack," a 4.0 double major in biology and English (i.e. an excellent student). He was an R.A. (resident assistant) in the dorm where the first student who was shot, and was killed going to her aid. A friend put up this photo of him, above.

Another was Reema Samaha, who was 18.

And Ross Alameddine, who "could make anyone laugh":

 

And Maxine Turner

And Professor Liviu Librescu. According to CNN, "Dr. Liviu Librescu was credited with saving many students' lives by blocking the door as the shooter was trying to enter. Dr. Liviu Librescu was a Holocaust survivor and one of the most published professors at Virginia Tech.”

Emily Hilscher loved horses

Henry Lee was a freshman from Roanoke, Virginia.

Erin Peterson, as reported by her father

Dan O'Neil

  Caitlin Hammaren was studying French

Luckily I don't smoke