Then yesterday I was reading an essay about a display of photographs in a storefront in Westlake, the most densely populated neighborhood in Los Angeles. The photographs are of families in Central America who are standing behind cartons sent by relatives through a delivery service run by the store in Westlake. The author first thought the photos were clever advertisements thought up by the owner. Turns out they were requested by the customers, who wanted to make sure their parcels arrived at their destinations.
Here's a passage from the essay: "I think of the photos of Weegee and James Van Der Zee and the earthwork projects of the 1970s, in which the act of documenting difficult, expensive excavations became the work itself.....Decades later, the urge to document the natural world returns. Joel Tauber, a young Los Angeles artist, spends weekends burying himself in desert sand and covering himself in mountain bramble. Tauber went to college in the 1990s, and he wants to find out for himself if what they say at school is true: has "nature" wholly disappeared? Through these projects, Tauber finds that nature makes its presence felt, when the sun goes down and you're buried naked under bramble at 6000....There is a ghostly presence in the videos and photographs Tauber takes of these experiments. Unfiltered and un-Photoshopped, it's nature brut'"
So I'm thinking of Jameson and this essay together on my way to work this morning when I hear this story about stranded commuters. The Metrolink spokesperson apparently agrees with Tauber:
"We offer our apologies," she said. "We do the best we can but Mother Nature can be quite the trickster." ------------------------------------------------------ Metrolink commuters delayed for hours after train hits small rock slide
Originally published 12:21 p.m., January 25, 2008 Updated 12:21 p.m., January 25, 2008
From staff reports
As many as several thousand Metrolink train commuters traveling from Ventura County to Los Angeles endured severe delays this morning after a train hit mud and rocks washed onto the tracks by heavy rain, Metrolink officials said.
The train, which departed from Montalvo at 6:44 a.m., had just left the Simi Valley Station about 7:30 a.m. when it ran into a small landslide, said Metrolink Spokeswoman Denise Tyrrell.
The train had to be stopped for safety reasons because the rocks and debris on the tracks damaged its brake lines, Tyrrell said. No one was injured in the collision.
The train was stopped in a rugged, single track area near the Santa Susana Road overpass. With no way to get passengers to another train, Metrolink sent a train from the Chatsworth Station to pull the stopped train to that station, Tyrrell said.
Passengers arrived at the Chatsworth Station about 9:30 a.m., an hour after they were scheduled to arrive at Union Station in Los Angeles, she said.
Four other trains were delayed as a result of the collision.
"You're talking about potentially a couple of thousand people," Tyrrell said.
Landslides have occurred along Metrolink's Ventura County line before, but never in this location, she said.
"We offer our apologies," she said. "We do the best we can but Mother Nature can be quite the trickster."
http://www.venturacountystar.com/news/2008/jan/25/no-headline---nxxfctrainweb26/?printer=1/