How wealthy people have made California beautiful


As a history adventurer, I like to look at things from various points of view. Big or small, rich or poor, celebrities or nobodies (like me) all matter to me. And oddly enough, a point of view I don't hear much about is wealthy people who have made California beautiful, and continue to do so. I'll see if I can explain.

To me, it all depends on your definition of wealth. Speaking for myself, when I first moved to California, and wanted to register my car there, I found that I couldn't unless a particular part was replaced, which was part of the anti-pollution controls that the previous owner of my car had removed. My question was simple, "What if I couldn't afford it?" And the answer was just as simple, "Then you can't drive that car in California." And that was my introduction of how money was used in California for beautification - this case, air quality. Of course a lot of people don't see it that way, they see it as just part of a conspiracy, man, with government lining their pockets. When those people start ranting, I just smile gently, and ease away.

We all know about the cliche rich and greedy person who is so obsessed with attaining more wealth that they destroy everything around them, in search for the all mighty dollar. And yes, there are a lot of people like that, but I've never different types of wealthy people. I've met people who have made a lot of money and want to live in a beautiful place, with clean air, and safe places for their children to play. These are the people who seem to be kind of like old hippies, that you would never suspect were outrageously wealthy when you meet and talk to them on a hiking trail.

These people aren't just interested in increasing their bank balance, they want to live in a California that they enjoy. They want open spaces left open, and are willing to donate large sums to get them. They're the people who quietly buy up large chunks of land ostensibly as investment property, and then do nothing with them.

If you've ever become angered about a place that you love becoming ugly, and you wonder why "they" don't do anything about it, there really is a "they", and they do.
History Adventuring on Patreon

 Click here to become a Patron!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why cars in the future won't need stop signs, red lights, or stripes on the road

Image
Time-travel with me into the future. Where we're going, we'll still need roads, but our cars won't need the kind of stuff that human drivers need, like stop signs, or stuff painted on the road. And if you're already panicking that computers will take over, don't worry, they already have. The fact that you're reading this right now combines so much amazing computing power that it would have been unthinkable to anyone in the 1960s, or '70s, when I was a kid. Speaking of being in the geriatric age group, if you're like me or older, you took a lot of pride in knowing the rules of the road, such as what to do at a stop sign if four cars approach at the same time, the difference between a "yield" sign and a "merge" sign, or maybe how to parallel park. But calm down there old-timer, that type of knowledge will just be as quaint as how to use a horse and buggy is nowadays. Sorry! The best way to picture how traffic will flow in the future is
Read more

Watching a neighborhood grow and change in Phoenix, Arizona

Image
I stopped to take a closer look yesterday at where the old Circle K had been in my neighborhood, which is a suburb of Phoenix. And it's got me to thinking about how much Phoenix grows and changes over the years, and how people feel about it. This particular neighborhood was built in the mid 1980s, when there had been only a smattering of houses and a community college (Glendale Community College, built in 1965). There are some houses that I can tell are from the 1970s, and a few even older, but what happened here is that the neighborhood suddenly appeared in 1985 or thereabouts. There are three shopping centers on the corner of 67th Avenue and Peoria - the one in the photo is called "Peoria Station", and it was designed to kinda look like a train station. The other three are called Westporte Village, Brittany Square, and Crossroads Plaza. I've lived in this neighborhood for a very long time, and no one ever uses those names, even though the signs are still up. But the
Read more

Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?

Image
As someone who has been interested in history since I was a little kid, I've always asked the most childish questions, and quite often never got an answer. As a kid, I was told to run along and play, and don't bother the grownups, so I set my questions aside to work on when I myself became a grownup. But some questions I really haven't found a satisfactory answer for, and get thrown away as I find myself learning the more important stuff. I now understand the grownups, but the kid in me still has childish questions like "Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?" The first question to ask is whether a particular style (whether hair, clothing, etc.) was in style at the time. The moustache was, and you can Google a photo of Charlie Chaplin, who wore the same style of moustache at the time, and quite stylishly. The wide lapels were in style in the 1930s, as was were the tall shirt collars and small ties. But the haircut wasn't - it's just awful. Me
Read more