The Goldenrod Chronicles, Snow

Paper snow

Memory works in strange ways. Well, actually it’s science and facts. But as a human who experiences it, it’s strange - you know?

Around the new year, I saw a short documentary about the how and who behind the 3,000 pounds of hand-thrown confetti that creates the perfect New Year’s atmosphere at Time Square. You can see the video HERE (it’s 12 minutes long) and did you know the people who throw the confetti are called Confetti Dispersal Engineers?

It was moving. And that confetti really is beautiful. But mostly it triggered a memory for me.

When I was young, think 1980’s and 90’s, my mom would take me to work at her very tall office in Downtown Los Angeles during Christmas break. I was on vacation. She was not. Going to her office was a treat. She had a corner office (I think) and a couch.

And over the winter holiday, to celebrate the end of the year, everyone in the office buildings would remove all the little pages from their paper calendars and throw all those pages off the building heights. It was work confetti. It was the closest to a snowstorm downtown would see in the winter.

That was a long time ago for my little memory. And if the memories are still in there, the windows in my mom’s skyscraper didn’t open, so we walked to an open bridge walkway between buildings and I got to toss her calendar pages.

It felt magical. It felt like being a part of a collective human experience in that way where the magic is only happening because we are all doing something together.

December 31, 1978. Photo from Los Angeles Times.

The celebration started decades ago. And then the pleas for the tradition to stop got louder and louder in the 1980s and 90s - the cost and time to clean it all up.

For something that seems to big (the tradition of a downtown covered in little calendar pages each New Year) it was really (REALLY!) hard to find any historical coverage. Just one news story from the LA Times. (That said, San Francisco had the same tradition and there is lots of historical coverage and photos of that.)

Other things I remember:

• There was a Calder sculpture or at least a Calder-colored sculpture

• Turns out they are called pedways and they are a historical thing. (Love I think you’d like this.) The Forgotten Pedways: How LA’s Plan For Futuristic Walkways Went Unfinished

The end. Unless you want to tell me about some memories/cultural experiences that recently came to mind.

Oh, but two things to share:

• Joshua Idehen, Learn to Swin Part II - Immense thank you Anders. (Album)

• A Disgruntled Federal Employee’s 1980s Desk Calendar

vanessa

It’s writing. But it’s not sleeping. But I guess it’s still progress.