A Weird Week

What I did, saw, baked, pondered

Last week was a weird one. Just being in Los Angeles was weird. The news made it sound as if the city was convulsed with violence, descending into chaos. I got lots of worried texts from friends, and had to assure them that this was, ahem, fake news in the most part. In a mile-square part of downtown, protests against immigration raids got whipped up into confrontations by the addition of militarized police, but the depiction of the whole of the city disintegrating into lawlessness was ludicrous and intentional. A photographer friend of mine went downtown to take pictures for the New York Times, and he said except for some kids who were acting stupid, the scary thing was police pointing weaponry here and there. Ugh. The only sign of anything unusual that I saw was a longer-than-usual line at the office of an immigration lawyer down the street. I’m worried for the endless number of people I know here who were born outside this country. For what it’s worth, my mother was born in Hungary, and her family was denied American visas when they were hurrying to get out before WWII. Guess where they went instead? Mexico. Quite an irony, I’d say.