Rancho Land.   

In the last few years, I have found myself writing longer essays and posting them on my main social media source, Facebook.  While I enjoy digging in and getting into the weeds on a topic important to me, the truth is  I am challenged by Facebook for many reasons, and I would dump it like a hot potato if not for the fact that so many people I care about and whom I respect are on FB and to exit it would be to leave a lot of goodness generated by those folks.   So, I have stayed.   

My writings on FB are like the posting of most people;  a quick post, usually one or two lines or paragraphs with a photo or a link to a story and an inordinate amount of photos of kittens and cats and rescue dogs.    But  I have gone deeper into local issues, exploring topics from my own perspective or experience and as soon as I wrote them, I knew they were unlike my other writings.   They tapped something in me that felt different and early on I ended them with “Notes from Rancho Land.” 

I used the phrase “Rancho Land” because to me it speaks to the complicated history that is Los Angeles and California and also the complex present that we live in now.    There are things unique to our city that are curious and weird and sometimes wonderful.   Great.   There are also things that are misguided, awful and tragic usually by the hands of the powerful, just as in the other periods of Los Angeles including the rancho era.   Sigh.

While I may stay on the rat filled ship that is FB until my world of good people abandon it, I do know it is also time for me to launch this blog, Rancho Land.  

My goal for Rancho Land is to post writings  that focus both on the present and the history and the weirdness and at times the complicated issues of Los Angeles.   However, Rancho Land will not be one note of anger or one note of romanticism or one note of shallow or one note of heavy.   That’s not how I tick so that’s not how I write.     The musings will be on a variety of topics, some deeper than others and some dark and some whimsical, hopefully they will tap an emotion or interest in the reader as they traipse their own journey in rancho land. 

Tracy