Wednesday, January 12, 2011

REPORTING: From Arcadia!

All day I had heard helicopters flying over my house, wondered why, but never knew. I found out when I went to get my mail around 3:30. I could see and hear a small crowd of people over at my neighbor's house!


They were hooting and calling over their back fence. I went back to my house, grabbed my camera and walked over to the Mead's house. They let me in and I found out the scoop!!

I have known for a while that Los Angeles County needed to clean out the dam up here by Highland Oaks. They need to clear out all the silt. They felt the need to put it back behind my neighbor's back yards all along Highland Oaks. To do this, they need to cut down, clear out about 150 oak trees. Yes, they do. Many people have protested. I guess last night a somewhat famous tree protector plus 3 other people went back there, got themselves in the trees and are staying for as long as they can.

So, from my neighbor's backyard, this is what I saw:


I am looking over their back retaining wall. These are the police officer's to keep the peace. The trees that are being taken down are back beyond that chain link fence.


You see that green splotch there in the middle of this picture?

That's John Quigley, the sort-of-famous tree protector. He once sat in a tree in CA for 71 days until the owner of the land, a developer, agreed to move the tree so it did not have to be cut down. He is up there in a sleeping bag with provisions.

Here is local news station reporting on all the hoopla. In particular, this is John Quigley:


Here is a report right at the top of Highland Oaks. This area was all blocked off. There is an entrance there that will take you right to all the tree action.


Because I am NOT a professional reporter/photographer, I didn't realize I needed to take MORE pictures!! When I got to my neighbor's back yard, there were about 8 people there. One of them happened to be Daryl Hannah (of Splash fame!), but I'll get to that later. There were several big time activists. They are friends of Mr. John Quigley. They were whooping to him, yelling encouragement, waving a towel. I heard one of the girls say that if he needed, she could do something to distract the police like falling off that wall or something. Well, about 10 - 15 minutes later she fell off the wall! I don't know if it was real, but it was a huge coincidence!

Oh, there was a distraction all right. The police came over. Her friends went on the other side of the wall. "Could we get ice, could we get a chair, we need to carry her back over..." Stuff like that. The ambulance was called!


She was wincing in pain. She did NOT want the paramedics to look at her. She did NOT want to go to the hospital. It was a pretty good distraction and some voices were raised.

That is Daryl hovering over the fall-over girl. Daryl is wearing the dark jacket. You can see one of the legs of the fall-over girl.

That's Daryl's camera there on the ground. I never saw her use it. I am sure she did though.

Now the girl is trying to get out of this situation. Her activist friend there is "holding" her up. She wants to leave. I didn't really hear this conversation although it did get loud.
Look how nicely she is holding her leg up.

For some reason they got themselves out to the car then had a nice (probably not too nice), long conversation out by their car. At one point I saw her sprawled over the top of her car. Very dramatic.

Now we can see most of the "Activists" people over at another neighbor's house. They went over there because they felt that they could get a better view of their friend, John.
That is Daryl Hannah there with the Hat on:
You know Daryl from:
Splash
Roxanne
Wallstreet
Kill Bill
Blade Runner
She dated John Kennedy






When I first went over to the Mead's (the first neighbor's house), I recognized the woman that turned out to be Daryl Hannah. I knew I knew her, I just couldn't place her. I guessed she was probably someone from High School. Here we are in Arcadia, what else was I to think. I didn't want her to think me rude or stuck up so I was planning on just coming clean at my not quite remembering who she was. Just before I got all my courage up to ask, I realized it was Daryl Hannah. I knew her from the movies! Very funny. Glad it takes a bit of time for me to build up my courage.
Here is the view from our front porch. After a time the fall-down girl and her friend drove 50 yards across the street to another neighbor's house. Some of them loaded into this car, others got into a truck.


Here they are getting into the car:

Ok, so that's the story!
Pretty exciting!
As of right now, 9:38 pm, it is dark out, but there is a nice, bright spot light shining where the tree sitter is. I have no idea what the plans are. I will keep you posted!!

1 comment:

Heather said...

Very interesting! I also find it amusing that the first movie I thought of when you mentioned daryl hannah was steel magnolias. Show's just how 'girl' I am :)