May 24, 2011:
Buildings on hillsides look like castles. Europe. A line of fortifications in some ancient village. Italy, France, Greece.
When you're closer, they're just apartments. Cheap ones with their backs to the freeway, inhaling fumes, whitewash running gray with rain.
Who lives here? Working class people, the bottom strata of the employed. Newly married couples, military families, immigrants.
These are my people. I lived with them most of my life.
Around the curve, they're gone. Big houses, people I don't understand.
Here's the fundamental truth of America. The community of three large hilltop homes where I live today has a gate, to keep people like me out.