A couple weeks ago Victor Merina at the USC Annenberg School of Journalism asked me to be a tour-leader for orientation trips across Los Angeles for incoming graduate students. Groups visited sites in East L.A., the San Fernando Valley, the central metro area, the Westside, and South L.A., led mostly by journalists from the L.A. Times and the Annenberg faculty.
My group went to the Watts Towers and the Stanford-Avalon Community Garden, one of the gardens that sprung last year from the South Central Farm. At the garden we came away with clumps of massive green onions, pulled directly from the soil by the farmers who showed us around. It was a really invigorating day.
Annenberg set up a blog for students to write dispatches from their tours. Here, Elizabeth Henry writes about the Watts Towers, which, on first sight and on every visit thereafter, are always spellbinding:
It might be a story of spiritual realization; it might be a story of psychotic fascination; it might not even be a "story" at all but more of a "hobby," born of boredom and without reason. But I believe that Sabato Rodia had a vision that he pursued in blind faith, without answers or reasons—like an Italian Noah for the modern age. I imagine that Simon’s diligent and almost inhuman perseverance was an "if you build it, they will come" type of situation. Who will come? That is the question. Perhaps aliens; perhaps God; perhaps just "other people." Rodia was an isolated, brilliant man who suffered – as we all do – from the anxiety of human sociability.
Read more here, and check out the rest of the posts at Riding (and Writing About) the Streets of L.A. * Image of the towers above by Elizabeth Henry.