The Basics:

]]> The Lowdown:

What is your blog about? Ideas, and the idea of Los Angeles as a center for ideas. It's the slow-boil chronicling of the goings-on at policy centers, research institutions, and the like in and around the Southland - and beyond. The blog covers the tanks themselves, the people who work at them, and the big ideas so often born at tanks.

But you sometimes stray from just talking think tanks. Hey, some days you gotta talk about space aliens. Or soccer. And almost any topic can easily enough be linked back to tanks. There's got to be some kind of Six Degrees of RAND Corporation parlor game.

How did you get involved with KCET Local? Juan Devis invited me. I'm a big fan of his visionary work - for KCET and elsewhere. His Web Stories and Departures are superb. So, I said yes. Then Juan started telling me that Don Waldie and Erin Aubry Kaplan and Holly Willis had already said yes, so I kept saying yes until Juan hung up the phone.

Did you know the other KCET bloggers? I'd met Adolfo Guzman-Lopez during the Not A Cornfield project. He and his Radio Sonideros colleagues produced an audio documentary called, "Roots of the Park." I'd also seen him perform his spoken word work. Holly Willis - I'd written a couple of real short pieces for RES, but never worked with her. I met Erin Aubry at a party years ago - she wouldn't remember, but hey, for me, that was a big night out - I got to say hello to the likes of Erin, Nina Wiener, Betty Rinehart, Ruben Mendoza, and Ron Athey.

What about Ophelia, Brian, and Don? I've only met Ophelia and Brian (who works for Reason) once in person, at KCET. I've neglected to mention Gary Dauphin so far, but his writing and his web vision is first-rate. Now, as for Mr. Waldie, my jaw dropped like the Times Square apple when I read his Better Know a SoCal Blogger piece.

What are you talking about? Mr. Waldie's KCET Q&A. In it, he references a piece he wrote a decade ago, about the future of the literature of Los Angeles. I don't save too many hard copies of newspapers and magazines, but I saved that one. It was published in 1999. I was the books editor at latimes.com. The print edition of the Times' Book Review was still a stand-alone Sunday tabloid. The cover illustration was by James Doolin, whose works grace the interior of the opulent MTA headquarters over near the Twin Towers jail, downtown. Waldie wrote:

The former literature of Los Angeles is nearly finished - the literature of Anglo unease with race and sunshine in our ruined utopia. The literature that runs from Nathaniel West to Joan Didion is passing away. The literature to come isn't here yet. When it is, it will finally be comfortable with the autumn heat and the pitiless light in a season of drought. Its writers will be more familiar with the real streets of Teheran or the imaginary ones of Tenochtitlán than those of Greenwich Village. They will be disturbingly frank about the presence of God (or gods) in the suburbs. They won't be Emersonian. Because many of them will have gone in a day - not in a lifetime - from birthplaces in villages and barrios to East LA, Glendale, or Long Beach, their writing will be crowded with ancestors whose grievances cannot be dismissed by our longing for perpetual adolescence.

I had recently moved to L.A. from the East Coast. I read Waldie and thought, yeah, he's right. I gave up writing fiction - my responsibility, not his - and stuck to trying in part to chronicle stories told by people like he mentions.

The issue has come up in your blog of think tanks having to fill a conservative void left by liberal academia. Is there merit to this claim? I didn't say that. But back in April - TTLA featured a Q&A with Yaron Brook, head of the Ayn Rand Institute. Brook all but said that. His group is far from the political mainstream, but they offer provocative, often contrarian ideas and they make good copy. Also, to state the obvious - it's easier to start a think tank than a university. So if conservatives felt academically excluded and aggrieved, then throwing money at tanks is a smarter short-term investment.

People are hot on grass roots movements these days. Is expertise, provided by organizations like think tanks, an undervalued asset in the 21st century? Not to go all "it depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is" here, but that depends on what you consider "grass roots." Many prominent think tanks provide institutional homes for politicians and other former government employees - from military officers to state department pros to budget wonks. I don't suppose you'd consider John Podesta to be 'grass roots'. Not in the sense that here in L.A., Marqueece Harris-Dawson and the Community Coalition are grass root. Think tanks have a great deal to offer locally, nationally, and internationally. The job of a tank's staff is to do research, offer solutions, and make those ideas public. Then it's up to all of us to take, or to leave, those ideas.

How do you figure out which tank to trust, and which not to? Like anything else, every idea from every tank ought to be evaluated on its own merits. Sure, consider the source and its political leaning, if any. Ideas themselves, though, are non-partisan. Professor James McGann spoke to TTLA about who works at tanks and why - among many other topics he covered. McGann was last year to this blog what at least some think tank execs and staffers are to the media at large: an independent arbitrator.

Some critics have stated that the political might of private think tanks is inherently undemocratic. No one, after all, elects these men and women who propose important policy changes. Would you defend or refute this criticism? There are two think tanks in North Korea. Those are most likely inherently undemocratic. Stateside, though, think tanks aren't star chambers or shadow governments. They aren't K-Street lobbyists. They are somewhere between consultancies, colleges, and publishers. And okay, maybe for a handful of folks, a political purgatory. By the way, here's a story you might like. A guy once said to me, "Think tanks? Those are the two worst words in the English language."

What happened next? He wound up doing a lot of the original illustrations for TTLA. But hey, fair enough - even the think tanks don't always like being labeled as such. Michael Rich, RAND's executive vice president, said during his TTLA Q&A that his organization is uncomfortable with the term. He uses, "research organization," "non-profit," or "objective research organization." This naming convention is more art than science. The L.A. Times identified one local joint recently as a "think tank," and a year ago one of the principles at this place scoffed to me at that same notion. Also, do a web search for "action tanks" and you'll get plenty of results. Many of them having to do with shoulder-baring apparel or combat vehicles, but some about more aggressive public policy advocacy.

Thank you for taking the time to do this interview. My pleasure. And thanks to everyone at KCET Local. If you're reading this and able to make a pledge in support of this website, please do.

The Basics:

Blogger name: Erin Jane Aubry Kaplan

Official name of blog: Cakewalk

Do you have a day job? No, unless you consider freelance journalism a day job.

When did you start blogging? Before blogging at KCET, I was mainly writing for a site called Three Brothers and a Sister., and I still do. Though to be perfectly honest, I don't quite have the blogging rhythm down. Maybe my head's in another age.

How many hours do you spend online/on your computer? Probably more than I think. I'd say between four and five.

Where do you physically blog from? At home in Inglewood, mostly from my dining room table. I was trying to keep it from becoming an ad hoc office, but I've given up. Yes, I do have an office, but the dining room has better light

What are you currently reading? Slavery's Constitution by David Walstreicher. It's a dense but fascinating, blow-by-blow account of how the founders deliberately wrote the Constitution around the political and philosophical minefield of slavery. Even though slavery was omitted by name, its fingerprints were everywhere. That original strategy -- implicitly incorporating the racial status quo into a newly-founded country -- explains a lot about our schizophrenic racial attitudes today: we want to believe we're past race and, at the same time, we're obsessed with it. Also, I'm reading a Kim Barnes novel, entitled A Country Called Home, that has a wonderful opening.
]]> The Lowdown:

So what's Cakewalk about? It's about negotiating this state of mind called Los Angeles on a daily basis. It's tough for all of us, but for people of color it can be downright crazy-making. Los Angeles is one of the last big American cities in which it is believed that anything is possible for anybody. Although that's mostly theory at this point, it's a very powerful theory that brought a lot of us here and continues to drive us forward. Of course, it can also drive us over the edge, as we saw with the 1992 unrest.

Who's the ideal reader then? Somebody who never thought they'd read a black writer because of the presumption that being black is inherently limiting. My hope is that they'll read my writing and realize they've been looking at those limitations from the wrong end. I'm really looking to shift perspectives.

Can you explain the motivation to move from away from print and into the digital realm? Everybody told me that as a writer in the digital age, I had to get on the blogging bandwagon or risk settling into irrelevancy. I'm not quite sure that's true, but I have to say I like blogging, even though I still don't have the hang of it. I like writing, period, so I don't really care how it gets out there.

Neither do a lot of people, according to the current state of journalism. Are all these free blogs killing journalism? Well, journalism isn't dying, only the revenue model. It's getting harder and harder to get paid for doing it, and almost no one gets paid for blogging; if they don't get paid for journalism, does that make journalism and blogging the same thing? Not exactly, but there is some overlap. The main difference is that journalism follows a set of professional rules--of reporting, etc.--overseen by editors. Blogging is, much more often, an inconsistent one-person show. It can be inspired and informative. Or it can be boorish and self-centered.

Do you have any favorite Los Angeles blogs? D.J. Waldie's. I read him on a regular basis. Juan Devis is good, too. And Kevin Ross at Three Brothers and a Sister always surprises me. He's a black Republican with a brain and a big independent streak.

What's your favorite thing to do in L.A.? My favorite things to do are actually very pedestrian--having lunch, walking the dogs, going to movies, browsing in new shops (I'm a mall crawler from way back), and sitting on the beach. Partaking in the life of the city in a million little ways, that's real gold. That's when I feel about L.A. the way I imagine most New Yorkers feel about their town.

Can you explain the decision to make Inglewood your beat? You write about the context in which you live, and Inglewood happens to be mine. Besides that, Inglewood is a rich microcosm for so many issues critical to black and brown communities in Southern California--police abuse, economic development, immigration, black & brown relations, middle class versus poor, black leadership. These topics all play out in Inglewood in a very distinct, small-town way. It's really a window into the struggle of black people to figure out their place in what's been called the "new" L.A. for the last ten years.

What do you foresee for Inglewood in the next ten years? It's very hard to tell in the midst of this recession. Small cities like Inglewood are just trying to pay their bills; the future feels like a luxury at this time. But even in good times, Inglewood has always suffered from a lack of vision, which stems from an inferiority complex about being a town of color. We have a great old downtown, but city hall prefers to focus on big-box retailers like Target and Marshall's. Not that there's anything wrong with those places--I shop there--but they're modular, they exist everywhere. Instead, Inglewood should focus on what makes it unique. But that's a more complicated venture than you would think.

Los Angeles has been increasingly associated with its large Hispanic community. Has this shift had an impact on how the city-at-large views its Black population? Yes, I think blacks are actually viewed less favorably now. People look at us and say, 'Why can't they stop complaining and make common cause with Latinos? Don't they all live together?' But nobody bothers to unpack the history of racial inequality in America, and hence can't see how that blacks and browns are two very distinct demographics. It's this lack of attention to detail that I see as a modern form of racism. A very modern one.

There is little doubt that racism still manifests itself in "modern" ways. But have race relations actually progressed since the early 1990s? Firstly, I don't particularly like the term "race relations" because it implies that we'll be fine if we just socialize a bit more. Eat each other's food and all that. And, to answer your question, I think we've become more racially superficial since the 90s. Back then, at least the civic leaders were thinking about the systemic causes of violence and unrest. Today, nobody would even uses the word "systemic" to describe racial issues in Los Angeles. In the aftermath of the 1992 riots, we convened a panel to tell us what went wrong, and then proceeded to put the recommendations in a drawer and went on about our business.

That seems to be the general trend. Are race relations different in other areas of the country? Ironically, they're probably better here, in many ways, because of people's ability to geographically isolate. There's seemingly no tension between black and white because the two rarely intersect.

Yet, the nation did elect a black president a year ago. Was the initial 'symbolism' of putting Obama in office overblown? In a word, yes. Originally, I had hoped it would be much more than symbolism, but so far I think I hoped for too much. As a black woman, it's a very strange and unsettling feeling to watch a black president be resisted against and insulted in the same way many black people are in real life. That's not to say that Obama is doing everything right--that's hardly the case. But that subtle element of fundamental disrespect isn't only disheartening, it's downright hard to watch.

Welcome back to 'Better Know a SoCal Blogger' on KCET.org, where we feature our city's plethora of fascinating and first-rate blogs. This week we are speaking with our very own D.J., Waldie, a blogger bent on withstanding the "harsh, judgmental line" that has been forged in opposition to Los Angeles.

The Basics:

Blogger name: D. J. Waldie

Official name of blog: Where We Are

Do you have a day job? My readers probably know that I've been Lakewood's Public Information Officer for nearly 32 years.

When did you start blogging? I've been writing on the Web since 1996, when the city of Lakewood posted its first homepage. Since then, the city's Web presence has grown, but KCET Local is the first sustained blogging experience I've had.

How many hours do you spend online/on your computer? My work puts me in front of a computer for nine or ten hours a day, partly to manage and edit the city's sites and partly to write or edit city publications.

Where do you physically blog from? From home, mostly.

Can you provide a link to the blog's first post? Here is the first one I can find.

What are you currently reading? Anything and everything about Los Angeles. Right now, it's Richard Rayner's A Bright and Guilty Place: Murder, Corruption, and L.A.'s Scandalous Coming of Age, a book about crime and its aftermath in 1930s Los Angeles.
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What is your blog about? Place. Where We Are is about place, about the connection between where we are and what (and who) we are. Long ago, I acquired a sense of place from the contingent materials of an everyday life, from its imperfections, really. We live on land we've wounded by our being here. Yet we must be here or be nowhere or have nothing with which to make our lives together. How should one act knowing that making a home requires this? How should I regard my neighbors, complicit with me in making our place? It's possible to answer with fury or neglect. It's possible to be so rootless that the questions are merely ironic.

But isn't there a fundamental problem with space in Los Angeles? There is. Desire has gone virtual. The machinery of celebrity is global. Gambler's logic prevails. And power is supposed to have moved to a non-place paradigm, moved off world so to speak into the no place of the Net. If true, Los Angeles is mostly stuck in a late 19th century idea of health and happiness in the sunshine of a particular place. The men who grained power in Los Angeles by acting on this idea felt that places mattered, and that their place was at the edge of something - the continent, a new century of consumer desire, the Pacific - and there was no place else to go. No one with a blog believes that there are any edges now . . . or centers.

So your ideal reader is someone interested in the city's bright spots? Yes, someone who is willing to fall in love with Los Angeles.

Why did you decide to finally move your words on over to the internet? Writers write. On walls, paper, stone, clay, and liquid crystal displays. While each of these sites of writing does, in fact, bear upon what is written, they are more or less the same in evoking the writer's act of writing. I write. The Web is there to be written on.

And many people certainly do write on it. Are the number of blogs actually to blame for the ruin that is today's journalism industry? A newspaper - a journal - is, as the name implies, a site for what is written for the day on which you read it. Bloggers write for this ephemeral, daily account of what seems (at the moment) to mean something. What distinguishes the two forms of the ephemeral - journalism and blogging - is tradition, the presence of editors, and a salary. Journalism has them; blogging (as yet) does not.

What are your favorite of the L.A. Blogs? I read Erin Aubry Kaplan, Brian Doherty, and Jeremy Rosenberg pretty much in that order.

You've made a career out of defending a city that has been lambasted by many. What criticisms have annoyed you most over the years? There is a harsh, judgmental line in American thought that stretches from Lewis Mumford, through Peter Blake in God's Own Junkyard, to James Howard Kunstler in Geography of Nowhere, to Andres Duany in Suburban Nation that defines all post-World War II, mass-produced housing as a failure, not just a failure of design but of the spirit. Kunstler, at the 1999 Congress of New Urbanism, dismissed post-war suburbs as "the place where evil dwells." As far as I could tell by their lives together, my parents did not escape to their suburb. They didn't imagine it to be a bunker in which they could avoid the demands of living with other people. My parents and their neighbors understood, more generously than the critics, what they had gained and lost by becoming suburban.

What's your favorite thing to do in L.A.? Maybe it's something we don't know about? Wander. I wander in L.A. on foot, by bus, and occasionally as a willing passenger in someone's car.

But, of course, you yourself must have some criticisms of the city. Any you care to share? The builders of my suburb turned lima bean fields into housing tracts with an astonishing degree of good luck and wisdom. Some of the good luck has run out of suburban development in the past forty years, and much of the wisdom in the building of places like Lakewood has been ignored. Have suburbs failed as a result? In Southern California, suburbs like mine are all we have. They'd better not fail, or 13 million of us will be homeless. Of course, new suburbs can be made better, and what we value in older suburbs can be preserved from more loss. The preference of a majority of people for neighborhoods that look remarkably like mine won't go away, even though the suburban frontier has grown harsher. Hopeful, imperfect people live in my suburb. Their hope has sometimes led them to acts of courage and generosity. Their imperfections lead them to unkindness and abuse and sometimes to violence.

Yet, for all those earnest traits, Angelinos are an apathetic people, by-and-large, when it comes to city politics. To what would you attribute that lack of civic engagement? The city's notoriously unaccountable system of local government was designed specifically to leave voters cold. The city's charter, even after recent reforms, remains suspicious of public life. It still contains cruel assumptions: that the city's working-class people should be politically neutral, the city's governance should be in the hands of dispassionate technicians, and that its elected leadership should be a bland board of directors. No wonder then, that Los Angeles residents of color see only an eyeless mask instead of a comprehending human face when they turn to a city government framed on these principles. Or that middle-class Anglo voters, because they were urged to turn their backs on city governance, now accuse city government of being remote. This city has failed to give its residents what they critically need - reasons to be faithful to each other that go beyond the politics of shared grievances. This city has not inspired faithfulness because it had not offered much that stood against the easy belief that no shared loyalties are possible at all.

As historically-minded as you are, could you provide our reader with some of your favorite writing on the city of Los Angeles?

• Golden Dreams: California in an Age of Abundance, 1950-1963 (Americans and the California Dream) by Kevin Starr
• Landscapes of Desire: Anglo Mythologies of Los Angeles by William Alexander McClung
• Los Angeles A to Z: An Encyclopedia of the City and County by Leonard and Dale Pitt
• Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies by Reyner Banham
• Southern California: An Island on the Land by Cary McWilliams
• The History of Forgetting: Los Angeles and the Erasure of Memory by Norman M. Klein
• The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved by Judith Freeman
• The Misread City: New Literary Los Angeles by Scott Timberg
• The Reluctant Metropolis: The Politics of Urban Growth in Los Angeles by William Fulton
• Where I Was From by Joan Didion
• Whitewashed Adobe: The Rise of Los Angeles and the Remaking of Its Mexican Past by William Deverell
• Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology by David L. Ulin

What books, then, are left to be written? Ten years ago, I wrote this in the Los Angeles Times Book Review:

With all that said, will Los Angeles always remain your home? I'm not sure. But probably.