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Thoughts from Places: Los Angeles after the Earthquake

2011-03-14 · John · watch on YouTube · World affairs · reflection essay

Lower-confidence wave

2011 videos did not pass the QA gate (17 %); their analysis is shown but less reliable.

John recounts the Friday of the Japan earthquake and tsunami in Los Angeles (his friend Ransom's found photographs, the beach, the Venice Canals, a Beverly Hills wedding) and reflects that water connected everything that day, yet technology can never quite bridge the oceans between us.

What is said

00:00:00 — Friday morning in Los Angeles: news of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan on the radio; John gets lost and calls Ransom (Wilshire and San Vicente)

  • ★★★ John woke in Los Angeles on Friday; driving to his friend Ransom's, he heard on the radio about the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, got lost in the news and had to call Ransom for directions. — 00:00:01 · Los Angeles

00:00:33 — Ransom's collection of found photographs and their stories (Dorothy's 1961 photo); Ransom's video, linked

  • ★★ John says Ransom collects thousands of found photographs taken of and by strangers and is obsessed with their stories, especially the notes on the back, such as one about a woman who found a baby girl in 1961. — 00:00:35
  • ★★ John says Ransom used such photographs to make one of the greatest YouTube videos of all time, linked in the doobly-doo. — 00:00:57

00:01:02 — The beach and a newscaster, running into the ocean in shoes, the Venice Canals on a tragic day, turtles, the freeway, the wedding

  • ★★ At the beach a newscaster said this very ocean had just devastated Japan, and John ran into the water forgetting he had shoes on. (playful) — 00:01:02
  • ★★★ Walking the Venice Canals with Ransom, John found it weird to stroll there on such a tragic day, but says all human life is lived in close proximity to tragedy. — 00:01:11
  • ★ Watching turtles, Ransom quietly asked whether it would be sad if a child's pool were enough to imprison you. — 00:01:29
  • ★★ Driving back to the hotel as the radio news got worse, John then put on a suit for a wedding reception at a home in Beverly Hills. — 00:01:37

00:01:52 — Reflection at a Beverly Hills reception: water everywhere that day; wishing to tell people across the ocean we think of them; technology can't bridge the oceans

  • ★★★ Drinking champagne by the pool, John reflected that although they were more or less in a desert, water had been everywhere that day: pool, glass, turtle pond, canals, ocean. (hedged) — 00:01:52
  • ★★★ John wished there were a way for people on one side of an ocean to tell those on the other that they were thinking of them: the people of Japan, and the woman in the 1961 photo. — 00:02:04
  • ★★★ John says images can travel in a way thoughts cannot, and he felt sad and frustrated that technology can never quite bridge the oceans between us. — 00:02:18

00:02:31 — Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund link; welcome back from Haiti; sign-off

  • ★★ John tells Hank that a link to the Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund is in the doobly-doo. — 00:02:31
  • ★ John welcomes Hank back from Haiti. — 00:02:31 · Haiti

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