D.J. Waldie is a historian of Los Angeles, a memoirist, and a translator. He is the author of Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir (1995),...
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El Día de los Muertos / Day of the Dead (Bilingual)
El Día de los Muertos
Are There Hidden Masonic Symbols on the Los Angeles Central Library?
Since I began leading docent tours eight years ago at the Los Angeles Central Library, some tour goers ask—is hidden Masonic symbolism contained in the art that decorates the library? Unwilling to get into a debate about conspiracy theories or mind control, I always chose to deflect the question.
Mobster Modes
"Clothes make the man", wrote Mark Twain.
What's In Your Wallet?
“A library card is the start of a lifelong adventure.”—Author Lilian Jackson Braun
Los Angeles Street Names: The Past Coinciding With the Present
In a city as a diverse as Los Angeles, there is one thing we almost all have in common—traffic. While stuck at intersections or on freeways, pondering the heritage of our fair city is probably not on the forefront of everyone's minds.
World Peace Bell Rings Out Message for Peace
Most visitors to the Central Library’s Maguire Gardens see Jud Fine's “Spine” installation and the unique collection of fountains that grace the gardens, but not everyone notices tucked away in the westernmost corner, nearest Flower Street, a quiet token of the most ambitious possibility, the World Peace B
From an Indigenous Mind—The Four Key Connections
First, a number of greetings in the language of a few native peoples on this continent:
Lee Lawrie's Wise Owls Decorate the Library
The doors of wisdom are never shut.—Benjamin Franklin
The classic icon of wisdom, the owl, is found in several places around the original Bertram Goodhue Library building. These owls are not hidden, but they may not be obvious to the casual visitor.
International L.A.
Los Angeles has been a multi-cultural, polyglot city from the earliest times. In 1781, the pobladores, a small group of racially diverse farmers from Sonora, Mexico, arrived near the banks of the Porciuncula River at a place that would later become Los Angeles.
The Language of Heraldry
I recently completed an online heraldry class conducted by the University of Strathclyde, and I learned a great deal that will be helpful to me as a genealogy librarian.