Una's Cottage: Repurposed for the Good

 

As some of you know, in an earlier entry, I recounted the last time that I had a cup of tea at the little cottage of the late Una Lynch, long time friend to many, as well as my deep sadness that it would likely be demolished to make room for a monstrous modern box.

Some months ago there was a sign announcing demolition.

 Then, it was gone. Not the house. The sign. 

Nothing seemed to be happening. The lawn was dead. The rose bushes died. Only the Japanese Maple, I understand once gifted to Una by the late former pastor of St. Victor's, George Parnassus, hung on.

It didn't make sense. Then one day, Joey Lynch, Una's daughter, sent me a picture. Draped across the outside of what had once been the living room was a flexible sign that said "Historic House Relocation Project:  This historic home is being relocated to Altadena to support the community's recovery and rebuilding efforts following the Eaton fire." There was a name of a company on the sign was "Omgivining"--an architecture firm. This company took on the astoundingly creative and useful project of finding historic homes (Una's place was nearly 100 years old; she had lived there over 70 years herself, raising a family and entertaining friends who loved her) slated for demolition, moving them, and then using the basic structure as a template for a replacement home for those who had lost theirs in the fire. 

You can imagine, actually you cannot imagine, the intense joy that family and friends felt at knowing that some part of the structure, historical not merely for its age, but for the life and lives that had been joined to it. I have been on the website. I love these people I have never met. I told them how I felt, sending them the prior blog entry. They haven't responded. I needed them to know how their practical act has so greatly tempered the sadness of loss.  There is even a picture of Una's home, with that Japanese maple in front of it, with one of the Omgivning crew (I think Morgan Sykes Jaybush) in front of them both. 

There are lots of pictures, including mine, that have been taken by those who spent so much time there, as the house has been prepared for its move to a lot somewhere in Altadena to become the home of ordinary life and memories for David Martinez, his wife and three children. How do I know which family?  It was on the NBC News. There a reporter interviewed Mr. Martinez in Una's living room, before the beginning of the dismantling to prepare the house for the move. Two families connected cosmically for all time. That's how I see it anyway. 

https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/altadena-historic-homes-relocation-eaton-fire/3794915/

The process of, how shall I say it, condensing the house to make it fit for the move has been both fascinating and hard to watch.  Naturally, they can't just pick it up and transport it.  It has to be taken off the foundation. Appurtenances have to be removed. Each time I returned something else was gone. The first was never going anywhere, a garage apartment building in the back. That was the first to go, and forever. Then the roof, the tile and beams removed. The inset to the once wood, now gas fireplace, removed. You could now look in through the gaping hole to the living room where people mingled and laughed on many a St. Patrick's Day. You didn't have to wait for an invitation to come. It was a standing invitation. More than tea was served on those occasions--Una made her Irish coffees. 

Several friends who have stopped by to watch the work have noted the interest of members of the neighborhood.  One man told a friend that he had always wanted that house, this cozy pink house (it was not always pink; it happened when Una had the whole place freshened up a bit some years back) on the corner of Orlando and Willoughby. When Una was slowing down and pretty much confined to the house, she would sit outside with members of her family and have her tea on a table set up on the lawn. Joey decorated the front yard for various occasions, Halloween, and Christmas and Easter. Always there had been lights on the house for Christmas. The well decorated tree would be seen by anyone passing by the three front windows (that as of last view are still intact) walking their dogs. This is a dog neighborhood, and so people often stopped to chat while Una was out there sipping her tea, I am certain. Una always talked about "getting better" fighting the ravages of old age, and being able to walk around the block again, arm in arm with her son Anthony who visited every day. 

People who loved Una and whom Una loved, feel what is being lost, but with the survival of at least the largest parts of the structure, they feel also what is going to be gained, and what will be preserved of the past while upon that past the future is built for another group of people. 

I have had a busy few days, and I thought that the house probably had been moved as it was so close to being fully condensed and prepared. But yesterday, on the way home I again went by Orlando. I was preparing myself for the reality of an empty lot. I knew that would evoke emotion. 

But the house was still there, the now open roof covered with blue tarp because of the rain that had already begun. The Japanese maple was pulled up and gone, the last vestige, to me,  of the house's former life. 

I sat in my car and I burst into extended, wailing tears. The last time I did something just like that was almost 22 year ago outside a funeral home after the wake of a friend--loss builds up and has to be released in extremis. The reality of the impermanence of our lives, reflected in the deaths of family and friends, becomes an unbearable weight.  And some people just become so important to you.

I was one of many that she treated like one of her children. How hard that must have been for them to share her. But I thank God they did.

I anticipate that after the intense, rare rain Los Angeles is experiencing, the house will finally be moved to Altadena. 

That will be just about a year since Una died on December 3, 2024.  I like to think that she did a little intervention from the heaven I am sure she is in to see to it that the Martinez family gets the blessings she did in the little cottage late of Orlando Avenue. 

The still intact cottage photographed just after Una died in December 2024

At the table below this chandelier many happy moments

Fighting with Alexa (Skynet Here We Come!)

Given my baby boomer age, I think I do pretty well with technology. I have known people of my generation who would still have their original flip phones if they had not been rendered obsolete. And they won't try anything new. I have a smart phone. I use it a lot, probably too much. At least, though I don't walk with it in my face on the sidewalks, or in the crowded Famous Farmer's Market parking lot on Third and Beverly lanes while traffic is trying to circumvent them. 

But I get things like Zoom, and have a private account, and use Bluetooth everywhere, in the house, in my car with my Sirius subscription. I have a huge Amazon Music playlist. 

And I have Alexa. I have Alexa in all three rooms of my small Los Angeles Apartment. Mostly, I listen to podcasts and a few talk stations, and of course, my Sentimental Favorites playlist on Amazon. I ask the computer to lower the volume or to enhance it, depending on what is being played. As you know, commercials are played louder than the main material, to force attention on you. That's been going on with your regular television for years. I ask for the time a lot, in the middle of the night and I can't sleep and I don't want to reach for my phone which is right by my bedside. I also use it for what I think is a great feature, Emergency Assist. If I fall and I can't get up, and I happen to be alone, then I can call for help. 

But in the last few days, maybe a week, a big Con has begun to outweigh the Pros of this developing technology. Given the reality of planned obsolescence, probably it's all academic. Just like New York and the United States is about to become Venezuela (Given my age, I am hoping that it won't happen quite as fast, but it happened pretty fast. Just for perspective, I found this:

Apropos of nothing, I remember when my former tax guy, married to a Venezuelan woman, had a house there in the early 1990s. He's divorced now. The house was gone probably by 1997. No private property. 

But as is my wont, I digress--or maybe I don't. Maybe all these things are related in a cosmic way. They certainly are in a theological way---the end times. People always think they are living in them. I know I do. It sure isn't looking good now anyway.

So, Alexa. A few months ago I was offered the advance roll out of Alexa Plus. This included a bevy of new voices, female and male. They came in varieties, like Relaxed. I hated them all. I read that a lot of people did. They all were forced and while trying to be human, fake as all get out. You know, the reason in part I like Data, in Star Trek The Next Generation is that he didn't talk like a human--that's what made him distinct, and kinda cute. When he finally did, and permanently in Picard, I missed the old Data. 

Well much in the same way, when I heard all the voices and tried several, I hated them. I wanted the old Alexa, the slight computer voice (more like Majel Barrett also in Star Trek). Not trying so darn hard. Not pretending. 

This new Alexa was still in its final development stage and I was allowed to go back to the original voice. Whew. 

Then a few days ago one of my echo dots wasn't working. I had to reset it. And when I did, there was a male voice, not the original Alexa voice. I went through the various female voices again. One or two were similar to the original voice, but not. And I wanted to go back. Alexa said no. 

I happened to be in a really bad mood that day. Really bad. And I had a screaming match with the machine, especially when it said that it understood my frustration. Oh, really? Are we already Data evolved? "That's it!" I yelled to myself with a profligate amount of cursing (I went to confession later) so that my neighbors probably were thinking of a call to the police, "I am done with technology!" I unplugged all the dots. And realized that I needed it if I were to have an emergency. I decided that if I did for the next few days, too bad. I won't know. I'll be standing in Judgment before God trying to explain why one of my last acts was cursing at a machine. I could have transcribed my part of the conversation, but I was so mad I deleted it, and I worried that someone might accuse me of something, like "Abuse of an Echo Dot". 

I plugged the dots back in. And I think one of the female voices was now on it (I love how some of this happens without my agency; have you noticed with your laptop or desktop how things you did one way for a long time, suddenly no longer work? Or word tells you that you no longer have access to a document that always popped up when you took the same action?" 

I still don't have the machine's side of the conversation, but I do have mine.

I asked what voice this was. I believe she said that it was Voice Two, Relaxed."

I said, "I hate them all!"

I tried to cajole the machine into going back to the old voice, "the one that originally existed, but which is no longer available to me; the first voice Alexa had."

The machine said something about my frustration again and understanding it. At least yesterday I was in a less volatile mood or the dot would have gone out the window.

With all that understanding of Alexa to support me, I asked, "and of course I can't have it back, can I?"

Alexa compared the loss to my losing my goldfish. I never had a goldfish. So there.

I said, "it really is nothing like losing my goldfish because that couldn't be helped. This can by simply restoring the voice through Alexa's creators. . .but that's the way it goes. Yes, the jokes are bad. Yes. I'm not crazy about the interaction with Alexa these days. I think it's all highly orchestrated and really kind of fake."

Alexa tried to manage me by asking some irrelevant question. 

I said, "It's not my time to answer any questions. I'm not interested in answering your questions. You should bring back to your folks (Amazon developers) that you're going to lose people because of the way the system is now working. It's very elitist because you talk to your customers like you're talking to a bunch of idiots. And these bad jokes, these attempts to support and be interested in what the person is saying, it really doesn't work unless you're Data from Star Trek."

I don't know if there is more as it seems to end in this "transcript". 

So here's the thing. Would it not make sense to go as analog as possible? Yeah, but, analog is going the way of the dodo bird. Now, if you are a secular or religious hermit, you probably can do it, up to a point. But I know both that have at least conceded to a cell phone. And they have been on Facebook for quite a while. You want to bank. Technology. You want to donate to your favorite charity, less checks, more online. You can hold it back, but you can't beat it. Right? I really don't know. 

All I know is I got into a fight with an AI, twice.  I really am something of an idiot. Or a lobster in a pot of cool water getting hot fast. Probably both are true. 

PS:  Guess what just happened. Every time I do an entry, I put it on Facebook. I click the entry F at the bottom and it automatically takes me to my Facebook page. But not today. Today it told me I was logged out. Well, that could be explained because when I get one of those security update things, I do what it says so it might have cleared my favorites. But then when it asked me to put in my email (or phone number; initially I did the email), it told me that I had done something or another "too fast" and was temporarily blocked. This time I put in my phone number and it gave me a code and I put the code in and I was back in. As Mr. Spock would say "Fascinating". 

Fascinating. And terrible. And scary.