(no subject)
Another year, another Halloween come and gone. For me Halloween has always been something of a two part holiday - one parts fun and candy and one parts remembrance and solemnity. I suppose this is the long term effect of having grown up in a city with such a heavy Latin influence. Today, before going to school, I walked up and down the street and looked at all the shrines the families in my neighborhood had set up in preparation for Dia de los Muertos and ended up noticing that quite a few of them (including the people next door) had some very recent photos on the alter. While I was taking my walk and looking at other people's dead friends and families as they stared out from their cushy beds of marigold leaves, it seemed hard to believe that this was really San Diego, and I wasn't somewhere else. It made me sad because it seems that we're increasingly becoming the type of typical southern California city that wants to attack all of it's past with a steam roller and a truck of wet concrete to set the foundation for a set of condos. I wonder if America will ever be the type of nation that treasures it's past?
So it was with a happy heart that I came upon this today :
For those of you who don't know America used to be home to an amazing collection of state lunatic asylums known as Kirkbride buildings (so named after Mr Kirkbride, a forerunner in modern mental heath treatment). These buildings were stunning examples of architecture (and important historical reminders of American medical and political history) that lasted, in many cases, almost 200 years before neglect allowed greedy developers to completely annihilate them or turn them into gutted Frankenstein like apartment buildings. Greystone is a sad case of the former, most of the main building having been demolished despite preservationists outcry. Honestly? This is just sweet, sweet revenge that begs the question of what did city officials think the outcome would be from demolition? Despite the fact that developers continue to hoodwink communities into selling their heritage, the fact remains that more often that not all they're left with in the end is 1/8th of a building, and a sign telling you not to take a crap.
Halloween is a time when the dead come back to see the living. I only hope we can present them with something that would make them proud to see.
Oh, and since you know I'm a sucker for petitions there is of course one to save one of the last standing Kirkbrides in MA.