In this very special edition of On the Natural, I recount my Christmas 2007 adventures wandering around the half-built housing subdivisions of central Indiana with a brand new DSLR camera. Check it out here:
If you're into good times in the great outdoors, the place to be in Southern California is the Cleveland National Forest. I did not know this until a couple weekends ago, when a bunch of us Arthur folks -- that'd be me, Jay and Eden -- headed out to the Santa Ana Mountains that mark the border of Orange and Riverside counties for one of the Los Angeles Mycological Society's mushroom forays.
Soon after our arrival (it's about an hour drive from Los Angeles) we met the dreadlock soldier pictured above, who's showing off a dried up little morsel of fungus -- I forget the actual classification, you'll have to forgive me -- that he unearthed from under an oak tree.
Eden and I turned up this tiny little pleated fellow by rustling around in some damp leaves, not far from where I was goofing around taking pictures of some lichens.
Arthur Magazine is back. Everything picks up pretty much where we left off last November, except now we're full-color. The appropriately-bearded delivery guy dropped off the Los Angeles issues at Arthur HQ last night, and similar dispatches should be arriving across North America this week. You can grab a copy online, too.
Oddly enough, your On the Natural chief expedition coordinator can be found on the cover -- ecstatic in suspenders -- just behind Lavender Diamond's radiant faith healer, Becky Stark.
We'll be celebrating Arthur's return this Thursday -- and every Thursday, actually -- at the Little Joy in Echo Park. Come get lifted to the sounds of Peter Alberts, Ashland Mines and friends from 10pm and on. Little Joy is at 1477 Sunset Blvd. 90026. It's free to hang around (duh) but don't be a doof: Bring cash, buy dranks and tip large.
On the Natural has been silent for a moment, but this should not be a cause for worry. For one thing, it's been very, very hot everywhere outside here in Southern California, so we've been doing inside things with our weekends, like going to the theater and watching Danny Boyle's marvelously depressing movie about the sun. What's more, the OTN team has been gearing up for our first backpacking expedition in many months. We'll be heading into the Ventana Wilderness east of Big Sur, CA this very weekend, in the company of my old friend Eric Merrill, seen here drunk in a cowboy hat singing along with Fleetwood Mac:
The persistent stereotype of Los Angeles as a city populated by plastic surgery disasters high on botox and wheatgrass, blinded to their hubris by the constant haze of smog, runs counter to its true state as an anarchistic, wildly diverse Pacific Rim metropolis. Scratch away at that veneer for a bit longer and one finds that America's oft-misunderstood minority-majority megacity is also deeply embedded in the natural landscape, regardless of the violent measures by which the 17 million people who've taken up residence within Los Angeles County must undertake in order to exist here. (This violence being the rare point of opinion where Owens Valley farmers and the local bears agree.)
Shining light on the organicity of the Southland is one of the aims of On the Natural, and in that quest we have found inspiration in a few other Los Angeles organizations, most notably the Friends of the Los Angeles River, Nature Trumps, Homegrown Revolution (formerly known as Survive LA) and the good time urban farm thinkers at Farmlab.
If you don't know Farmlab, now's a good time to get acquainted. There's Dublab DJs, puppets, Nels Cline and more happening at their downtown compound this Saturday (July 28) and the next (August 4). Grab the flyers from my library, or visit the Farmlab Accidentally on Purpose page for more info. Drop me a line if you're going and let's say hello to one another.
