Malibu morning picture of the day - Friday, August 28, 2015

Dear Family, Friends, and Gentle Readers,

It's Friday good people. And it was over 80 degrees Fahrenheit around 8AM today too. Very clear out.

It's classic blue on blue today, with a little haze on the water.

Hey, here's a feature that I've not been able to share for a while, but I felt sure that the good citizens of the City of Angels would not let me down. So, here near the end of August, last Wednesday, I found an subject for "The Christmas That Will Not Die" series.

I was exiting the Cahuenga Branch library Wednesday night, crossing Madison Avenue when, as daylight was dying, this display came on.

Yes, twinkling, cascade icicle Xmas lights in all their glory, shone in the hot summer evening.

I'm probably cheating a little bit, because you will notice a bell shape in front? It's the outline of a little shrine in which a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary stands in a blue hooded robe. (If you saw such a person in real life today, you'd assume she was a Muslim girl.) So, maybe it's not Xmas lights, but Virgin Mary lights? Fair enough ... but who did all the hard labor on Christmas night? Joseph? The angels? The shepherds? Jesus? Nope. That's what I'm talkin' about...

We always forget that people's birthdays are really more significant (at least on a personal level) for mothers than the person celebrating the birthday. That must be why mothers remember their kids' birthdays better fathers. So Xmas is Mary's Day.

Chapel of Our Lady of the Angels

BUT ... maybe this household is celebrating something more significant to L.A. people? Do any of you Angelenos know what this is?


Yes! I see all of those hands! Thank you. It's a tiny church, the chapel of the Porziuncula (literally "the little portion" [of land]). It sits inside  basilica in Assisi, Umbria, in central Italy. If the Assisi name sounds familiar, yes it's where St. Francis (namesake of the current pope) got his calling, and the Franciscan order thinks this place is pretty damned (probably the wrong word, but we'll go with it as a multiplier) special.

St. Francis 1181-1226

Long before Francis came along, it supposedly housed some relics of the Virgin and angel singing was heard there, and sometimes was called the Chapel of Our Lady of the Angels.

Fr. Juan Crepi
(someone tell him a joke pls...)

Fast forward to August (the month we're in now) 2, 1769, and there's a Franciscan priest Father Crespi whose along with the group exploring Southern California area. He notes the discovery of a beautiful (I guess the naturally-occuring, grey-and-white concrete channels of the L.A. River looked especially neat and tidy that day...) river on that date, which happens to be the feast day of Our Lady, the Queen of the Angels of Porziuncula or "Nuestra Senora de la Reina de Los Angeles de Rio Porciuncula" in Spanish, a really important day to his order.

My hometown river. The most beautiful river in America
west of the Mississippi!

So they gave that name to the river. And later, when the built a town by the river, it was called "El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora de la Reina de Los Angeles de Rio Porciuncula."

So, the city is named after a river, which is named after a feast day, which is named after a chapel, which is named after the little piece of land that it's on, and after Mary, the mother of Jesus. Holy frijoles and Mary Christmas!

Oh, and this Francis wishes
you a good weekend too.

And, of course, that name is much too long for anyone to say, so they just shortened it down to the last two letters of the last word "porciuncuLA": L.A. Don't let anyone ever tell you anything different.

OK, are you still with me? If not, I forgive you. It was the L.A. river's christening day anniversary earlier this month, August 2, so THAT'S probably why that shrine was up, and in true L.A. fashion, the guy didn't have the heart to take it down early because it's so pretty. Just like Xmas. That's what I think.

So, Happy Friday to all of you and have a wonderful weekend.

Love,
Pops

PS As a schoolboy I remembered part of the name to be "pornicula," following the tendency to shorten things. Because of that I first Googled that term in my original research for this post. Do that and you will get some very interesting hits. You will have to take off your parental filters from your browser to see anything though, so watch out.