So Cal Nancy

My first blog! This should be great fun. North Sister-South Sister, as you may already know, means my sister & I live in opposite parts of California. We also sometimes have opposing views, likes and dislikes. Amazing to have grown up together in southern California during the late 40’s, the 50’s and early 60’s, only 2 years apart and to have developed into two diverse & unique women. I continue to live within 5 miles of where I was born even though I always thought the East Coast was where I belonged. As a wee tike I spoke as a native New Yorker or Bostonian. Maybe a past life? When I visited New England in 1985, I felt like I had come home. I still plan to return there but watching the weather daily in Bar Harbor, Maine, I don’t think I’m a person who would be happy with 7 months of winter.

Having stayed in this area means I have seen enormous growth, change (not all for the better), congestion and influx of so many cultures. One major change is that people have become so rude. Not on a one-to-one basis, but when they are in a group or out in public it seems nobody wants to be accountable for their actions. In the drive thru lane at Starbucks every once in awhile there is a car ahead of me with a driver who is not paying attention to their surroundings and refuse to move up in the lane in a timely fashion. The problem with that is the traffic which is trying to turn in off the street ends up blocking the cars that are trying to get where they’re going. It seems everyone has their iPod or phone in their ear and is in their own little universe. Then there is the person who gets their drink at the pick up window and promptly wads up their receipt and drops it on the ground. Even though there is a trash can past the window for just that purpose.

Who do people think is going to come behind them and pick up their mess? It’s left for all of us to see blowing around on our streets and sitting on and under the shrubs along the roadway. Last week end as I was driving home from my son’s house, in the middle of the street just west of the left turn signal I saw a half full gallon of milk sitting on the pavement. What??? Who would have done that? You have to wonder if it was still cold, or all clumped together and smelly. Would the street sweeper pick that up in the middle of the road like that? The problem with crowded southern California is that there are so many of these instances that it just becomes part of our landscape. And what is familiar, that you see everyday, becomes acceptable.

Nancy February 6, 2007