This summer quarter (just gone) UCLA began a commuter program whereby it encouraged employee parking pass holders to turn in their passes (and get a full refund on the monthly parking fee that runs $63.00/month) in exchange for free Metro TAP cards, electromagnetic swipe cards granting access on all Metro buses, subways and light rail.

I’ve been wanting to inch towards a greener, less me-centric lifestyle for a while but … it’s only gone as far as that–wanting, not acting.

Finally, I was given a financial incentive–and, yes, sadly, it did come down to that.  (So much for eviscerating my soft me-centric center)

I ran the numbers:

A quick calculation of the standard fare of $1.25 each way, or $2.50 daily, had me looking at $10.00 of weekly transportation expenditure ($2.50 by four days, with Fridays off).  Multiply that by the average number of weeks per month (which comes in around 4.2 weeks per month on average) and I’m looking at $42.00 a month in transportation costs to and from work, already $21.00 under what I was paying just to have the privilege of being allowed to park at UCLA–never mind that this in no way means an employee is guaranteed a parking spot.

The view from my bus stop at Sunset Blvd. facing north on Highland Avenue

But the real savings come in when calculations include the AAA “driving cost” estimate based on $0.541/mile.  My one-way trip to school is about 11.82 miles, so my daily roundtrip comes in at 23.64 miles, bringing my total daily commute “driving cost” to $12.79.  Multiply that by the 18 or so days a month I usually work (again, based on a four day workweek) and we see combined “driving cost” + no-parking fee savings of around $250.00 ($230.22 for the “driving cost” estimate plus the $21.00 savings which factors in the full monthly bus fare versus a UCLA parking permit).

However, UCLA in its wisdom and benevolence offers employees a substantial subsidy.

As a result, my actual monthly cost of getting to and from work is closer to $33.00/month (or $100.00 per academic quarter, really), and this is an all-you-can-eat proposition, allowing for use 24/7, whenever buses AND Metro trains (i.e., subway and light-rail) run.

So rather than the $42.00 I initially quoted, my total commute costs per month are $33.00.

And, really, anything I use beyond my daily commute is gravy.  So, let’s say I want to catch Salonen conducting the L.A. Phil through Falla, Debussy and Ravel tonight … I just hop on my stop at Aqua Vista & Vineland and I’m at the Bowl in under 15 minutes–FREE.

Can’t beat that.

But the title of this post was really supposed to steer my thoughts towards an unexpected perk that came along with my bus riding.  Namely, time to read–to catch up on The New Yorker and to dive into my burgeoning bier of bedside books.  (I use ‘bier’ because … well, I’m a slow reader–deathly slow)

But these are two of the books I read this summer en route to and from work–devoting about a week’s worth of bus-time to each:  Luce’s In Spite of the Gods and Kynge’s China Shakes the World, about India’s and China’s combustible economies, respectively.

Full (brief) reports to follow soon.

But the basic fact, the beauty part, as they say, and the raison d’être of this post, is that I’m foregoing the comfort of a car’s cocoon and joining the broader community in my commute–sparing the environment a little and saving myself a lot–at least $2,500.00 annually.

Just sent this book, Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!, to Weirleader because its exactly the kind of essentially wholesome but irreverent stuff inquiring kids love. (Weirleader–I hope both boys dig it but its more suited to your eldest at the moment)

Hopefully it can figure into your 24 books for 2008.

A brief synopsis courtesy of Publisher’s Weekly (via Amazon):

Schlitz (The Hero Schliemann ) wrote these 22 brief monologues to be performed by students at the school where she is a librarian; here, bolstered by lively asides and unobtrusive notes, and illuminated by Byrd’s (Leonardo, Beautiful Dreamer) stunningly atmospheric watercolors, they bring to life a prototypical English village in 1255. Adopting both prose and verse, the speakers, all young, range from the half-wit to the lord’s daughter, who explains her privileged status as the will of God.

Some representative quotes from the review in The New York Times of December 17, 2008 after the jump:

Camelot, it’s not. Lowdy, for example, hates the fleas. The girl is not troubled by the lice “raising families in my hair” and doesn’t really mind having to scrape the maggots off the cheese. But she helps her father, a varlet, tend the lord’s dogs, and fleas are one of the occupational hazards. So she prays for relief:

I itch in the cathedral
When I pray upon my knees:
God, You saved us from damnation;
Now save us from the fleas!

For the young people of Laura Amy Schlitz’s new book, “Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices From a Medieval Village,” life tends to be nasty, brutish and short. But young readers are also likely to find it engaging, affecting and occasionally giggle-worthy.

… Schlitz is a talented storyteller. Her language is forceful, and learning slips in on the sly. She explains crop rotation through a boy who must plow the family fields after his father’s death and who confesses puzzlement over the concept of a field laying fallow. “I don’t know why the fields have the right to rest when people don’t.”

… It is bracing to see the Middle Ages without the rosy gloss many historical novels insist on bringing to the period. (Brief, easy-to-read footnotes and a bibliography give us some of Schlitz’s sources for her gritty portrait of daily medieval life.) This village stinks of dung and is sharp with the bitterness of poverty, wickedness and loss. But there are flashes of goodness and warmth as well. The mother of a girl named Mogg saves the family’s beloved cow from the clutches of a lord through cleverness born of desperation. Jack, Mogg’s half-wit brother, shows kindness to the hated Otho after the miller’s son takes a beating, and they cry together. The pathetic scene, and Jack’s belief that Otho shows his friendship by no longer joining in the other boys’ taunts of “Lack-a-wit / Numbskull / Mooncalf / Fool,” could even bring a lump to a grown-up’s throat.

Yeah, so I procured a PS3 on Saturday. Got Rock Band. That was the priority and FIFA 2008 will soon be mine. Oh, yes, it will be mine.

But today I just did a quick blog search for my Monday morning tech-crush news o’ the moment fix and I saw the picture above.

From the shot (since pulled from GameStop’s website) we see on the box that the item will be an “interactive light and smoke stage show” add-on to the cool-enough-already Rock Band game.

Gratuitous? Hell, yeah.

Essential. You betcha.

At least for any gathering where you want to turn the camp knob all the way up to 11 …

The ad bills it for Xbox 360 but what’s good for the goose is good for the PS3. And though the GameStop image shows a July 23, 2008 release date, we all know it’s just a kiss away … it’s just a kiss away … it’s just a kiss … away …

(via Engadget)

I know a lot of Southern California hamburger purists prefer Tommy’s or In ‘N Out but I still have a soft spot for Carl’s, Jr., despite their Paris Hilton ads and the lamentable dismissal of their once excellent hot dogs and fried burritos.

In any event, this is just to say that Carl Karcher, “deeply religious father of 12″ and founder of Carl’s, Jr., has died at 90. Carl’s, Jr. is the most notable chain in the CKE conglomerate Karcher founded and constitutes the bulk of their over 3,000 restaurants, spanning most of the states in the Southwest. In addition to Carl’s, Jr., CKE also owns Hardee’s, La Salsa Fresh Mexican Grill and Green Burrito.

No offense to Karcher, I hardly need touch on the fact that Green Burrito jumped the shark the day it was bought out by CKE and is now a pale imitation of the stuff I grew up on in Hawaiian Gardens and Downey, California. Pero es la vida …

Oh, and their french fries used to be da bomb.

(via LAObserved)

Warning: best viewed at home out of earshot of the kids because of the language …

Via Flickr by way of BoingBoing.

Hard to believe, at first glance, that this is a shot of downtown Los Angeles …

(photo by staff photographer at the Daily Breeze, Robert Casillas. )

“Dessau, Germany, 1945. In a camp of displaced persons waiting for repatriation, a Gestapo informer who had pretended to be a refugee is discovered and exposed by a camp inmate whose face is illuminated by the strong, sharp light of rage.”

Henri Cartier-Bresson

One thing I think about–having had some limited exposure (ouch) to the classic photo development process–is that there’s always been manipulation after the initial capture of a shot, to say nothing of the initial editorial decisions involved in selecting what to capture and what to leave out.

But pre-digital manipulations already included use of print-making chemicals of relative strength that affected the contrast and the extent to which a developer chose to burn and dodge (terms which must have little meaning to somebody growing up in our present digital era), not to mention the first precarious stage when the roll itself is developed.

Yes, these are minor compared to the level of transformative digital manipulations but there is a philosophical consideration here. Should photographs be held to a higher standard of realism than other arts because of their unique ability to replicate reality?

Most people engaged in historical study and journalism (often called “the first draft of history”) these days agree that total objectivity in their fields is not possible. The same is true of photography. There can be no pure objectivity though obviously most photographic reproductions are far more likely to be technically correct than paintings. What we can shoot for, though, is what some of the best historical narratives manage, a poetic truth, something that with its combined weight of apt metaphor and factuality can be, synecdochically, more than the sum of its parts and yet avoid the pitfalls of being overly cynical or celebratory.

What is annoying about the most syrupy digital manipulations is that more often than not they are neither beautiful nor revelatory. But I am perhaps particularly biased as I prefer a more raw, documentary style. If I do enjoy the occasional romantic image its probably not going to be a black & white of a gray three-year-old stranger in a gray raincoat with the only color in the brushed photo either a pink umbrella or scarf or something.

I like my romance straight-up, like this:

A couple asleep on a Romanian train (Henri Cartier-Bresson)

Godam, that’s wrong.