In the city of Angels

June 14, 2003 7:56 AM

"Twenty-two years ago, late in the evening one night in March of 1981, to be specific, my mother was killed in an auto accident on Foothill Boulevard in a town called Claremont." Talking Points Memo author Joshua Marshall, one of the best-known political webloggers, takes an unexpected personal detour.
posted by rcade (4 comments total)

I like the use of Webdings.
posted by angry modem at 8:01 AM on June 14, 2003

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posted by shadow45 at 8:34 AM on June 14, 2003

That's where I grew up, too -- Claremont. Foothill Boulevard is a big fat nasty road, one of those unwalkable, anti-pedestrian roads that were Southern California's gift to urban planning. I used to try to walk it with a pocketful of change to get to the pizza joint and play Galaga. I might have been doing that when his mother died there.

He's a little generous about the Inland Empire. Claremont itself had a few distinguishing features, mostly because of the five colleges there, but the rest is one undifferentiated field of anonymous communities, mostly just strip malls and cul-de-sacs. Don't believe me? At the bottom center of this photograph is the house where I used to sit on the roof, listen to my Walkman, and look out north over an endless vista of identical roofs.

It's not so much that everything changes in the Inland Empire, as Joshua Marshall feels, as that it all becomes the same again.
posted by argybarg at 8:36 AM on June 14, 2003

That was well worth reading. Thanks, rcade.
posted by languagehat at 9:59 AM on June 14, 2003