I am back from brief leave of absence and pictures resume but today from Glendale.
This is the view from the top of a hill in Glendale, looking toward the north. The cities of La Crescenta and La Canada Flintridge lie on the other side of those hills.
I first discovered this view when I was looking for place to have my daughter drive on her first day of driving lessons from me. All of the other kids I took up to Griffith Park and just had them drive around for a couple of hours within the closed-loop roads that connect 3-4 parking lots around the Merry-Go-Round. It was a great place without traffic lights, stop signs, or other cars to have them just get used to working the gas, brake, mirrors, etc.
However, when I took kid #6 up to the park, they had all kinds of signage up saying "No Driving Lessons" with some Calif. Vehicle Code reference. So, we left the park and I thought to turn into the Glendale Forest Lawn Cemetery. Not quite as good, but pretty good. I figured we were good for a couple of big loops before they noticed us on security and escorted us off (that didn't happen, but that WILL happen if you try it at a mall parking lot).Anyway, if you drive up to the top of the hill in the cemetery, you will find this chapel with a facade that recalls the Italian Renaissance cathedrals.
Forest Lawn is SO quintessentially California this way, creating a false sense of history, tradition, and rootedness in time, all in a way that is no more authentic than Disneyland's European village in Fantasyland. But we buy it (in five figures at least...). The place that my Dadd was cremated at this morning down at the bottom of the hill (the reason I was here) looks like a Tudor manor house. If Italian Renaissance doesn't do it for you, there's a Gothic chapel around the bend.I won't give Forest Lawn too hard a time, at least four of my elders (maternal grandmother, mother, paternal uncle, and now father) all call the Hollywood Hills location their final resting place and they're pretty good about keeping things looking nice here. I don't need such a place. I'll probably have the Neptune Society cremate me and my kids can scatter the ashes out in the Pacific. Cremation is totally anti-Christian since scriptures are so big on resurrection of the body, but I figure God will figure out a way to reconstitute me if he really wants me in the afterlife.
Anyway, Malibu pics start back up tomorrow, so get set for a parade of May Gray Days. Aren't you excited? I am. But I was always into subtlety.
Love,
Pops
From very early on Christians used 1 Corinthians 15 to explain that we needn't worry about the destruction of corpses prior to the resurrection--God will sort it all out, as you say. Weren't you the one who first told me about early theologians posing the hypothetical scenario in which a Christian dies, is eaten by worms, becoming dirt, which is eaten by grass, which is eaten by a cow, which is eaten by another Christian? Obviously, it's not a problem God hasn't thought of and if anyone hasn't figured that out, Paul would definitely berate them as a complete moron. (-;
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