Smog Life

I was born in a factory town outside of Chicago. When I was five my parents moved to a small town in northern Minnesota very close to the Iron Range as depicted in North Country.

I remember being young and thinking that Minnesota was always below freezing. That I would always need a parka that I would always be cold. This was perpetuated by my then uncle Leonard.

When I was a little older and thought about California, I couldn’t understand why on earth people wanted to live here. If there weren’t earthquakes there were mudslides, if there weren’t forest fires there was an intense drought. In fact in grade school social studies class I learned that it was predicted that there would be an earthquake so fierce that California would eventually fall into the Pacific. (Maybe Porfirio Diaz knew that when he sold the land to the U.S. for a million dollars.)

California, especially Los Angeles, was definitely not a place I ever wanted to live. This time not perpetuated by then Uncle Leonard. (The secret family in Georgia took care of him) It wasn’t just the natural disasters, it was smog, traffic and Paris Hilton.

I have found myself here anyway.