Mary Novaria

                                                                                          Mary Novaria photo The postman doesn’t ring twice. He knocks because we have no doorbell. He leaves the package by the door, knocks and scurries back toward his truck. I open the door to the tall narrow brown box leaning against the outside wall. “Thanks, Joseph!” I call, and Joseph, who’s wearing a pith helmet, turns around and I get his customary beaming smile. ‘’It’s an ironing board.” I don’t know why I’m compelled to tell him what’s in the box, but I do anyway. “You know you can just go get that at Walmart?” he teases. “Yeah, but… Amazon,” I say. “Free shipping. So easy.” Joseph laughs and says, “They’re keeping me in my job!” Aha...

My romance with LA has hit a rough patch. The affair’s not over, but I’m taking a little break to lick my wounds after yesterday’s abuse. You probably won’t be shocked to learn it involved The Freeway. Traffic is something that’s just part of the lifestyle here, which is one of the reasons we chose to live in a neighborhood where we can walk to just about everything, which I do, frequently with my little-old-lady shopping cart in tow. I’m not afraid of the freeways, I drive on them when I have to. I just don’t happen to like that aspect of the rat race.   Yesterday morning it had taken me only 35 minutes or so to get to the area called La Crescenta-Montrose, a picturesque community tucked in the hills about 30 miles north of Downtown. Little did I know when I left there at 2:15, it would be about three hours before I got home, and it wasn’t even rush hour. (There’s an oxymoron for you. Nothing rushed about it except, maybe, fury.) Courtesy of LAist.com Coming in...

When I walked through our neighborhood to church this morning, I saw a business that I hadn’t noticed before. It’s called First Century Bank. That seems very odd in this 21 st -Century world and it led to several strange images in my head. The first is Jesus and the moneylenders, so I saw Jesus walking into this bank on 4 th Street, all angry and turning over the desks. Later, I told my friend Cherie’ about it and she thought it was funny, too. So we wondered about the banking. Did people bring in fish to trade for shekels? It conjures up visions of a Vacation Bible School marketplace. How can I not love this? I got to church and leafed through the bulletin to see what hymns we’d be singing. None of my favorites, unfortunately. And we had incense since it was the Feast of All Saints, so people were already coughing and clearing their throats, even before the procession. Anyway, I looked at the schedule for Sunday School and the names of the classrooms got me giggling a litt...