 Ed Garren. By Ryan Gierach. |
I heard the same comment one day about two years ago on the sidewalk in front of "Tara." I was having a brief conversation with a noted journalist from our community. I have always respected her insights, writing ability, and ability to analyze situations. But her comments about Elsie's name for the place were the same, a slave plantation, how awful, etc.
None of this stuff is easy. But it hails back to the comments in my column last week about how Angelenos appear to deal with race and racism. If we simply erase any references to the topic, then it will go away.
This seems to be the current way of erasing Elsie's name for the place. For the record, "Tara" only existed in Margaret Mitchell's highly romanticized novel. There was no actual place, except on the back lot of MGM in Culver City. So I guess there was a "Tara" in the south, south of West Hollywood.
The institution of slavery in America hits quite close to my own personal history. I don't know about Mr. Zimmerman, or my journalist acquaintance, but my mother's family is from Georgia. The family patriarch won a land grant for fighting in the revolutionary war and settled the rich hills of north Georgia. As a part of working the land, they owned slaves. The place wasn't exactly the "Tara" of Margaret Mitchell fame, more like the small farm upon which Kizzie in "Roots" spent most of her life. After the Civil War, it was more like "Cold Mountain" than anything else. The family lost the property to Carpetbaggers and fell to share cropping.
 A view of the side of Tara slated for development. By Ryan Gierach. |
As a Family Therapist, we explore history, very deep personal history. Personal history is always multi-generational. It is impossible to separate ones past from the present. The experiences of our family all add up to who and what we are today. Part of the healing process is to be integrated with that past, and to have made peace with it.
To cut off that past, to censor it out of existence doesn't make much sense. Not a moment goes by in my waking hours that I am not reminded of both sides of my family's past, and it's a good thing. I never take for granted my privilege as a white male, or all that privilege has granted me and my ancestors. I have vivid memories of my mother's sister, aunt Velma, showing me the graves of two young boys, who great (double in my case) grandfather bought from a cruel owner. The boys, who had some sort of physical handicap, had been deemed unfit for work, so the owner stopped feeding them. Our ancestor bought the two boys, and took them home. Both were so hungry that one ate too much and died at the table, the other had to be pulled away from the food before he suffered the same fate. With tears in her eyes, she talked about human cruelty, the injustices of slavery, but more importantly the injustices of greed. Memories like that keep me centered. They are a simple fact of life that remind me of my relationship with God and humanity.
Being reminded of slavery is a good thing because it is part of our past, the very dark and ugly side of it that relates to the dark side of human nature, including exploitation and greed. Greed is the child of fear, and there seems to be an epidemic of both in America today, including West Hollywood.
I look around at all the folks who think it's better to erase history, erase the past, rather than learn from it.
 The Elsie Weisman Estate at 1343 N Laurel, which she called Tara for decades. By Ryan Gierach. |
So, in spite of Elsie Weisman's use of the name "Tara" to describe her beloved manor house on the hill, and in spite of her gift of it to the city, not only do the powers that be wish to erase her name for the property, but they also wish to erase her name as well. If "Tara" was so disconcerting, why not "Weisman Place" for the property? It's the least they could do.
And let's talk of erasing the past. Let's start with a more recent event than slavery in America, the Holocaust. My Jewish grandfather fled pre WWI Europe with his new gentile bride because he saw the mess that was coming. But to all those who stayed behind, we know what happened to most of them. Lest anyone forget, the machinery of the third Reich which so efficiently destroyed six million Jews was made by Mercedes Benz, BMW, Audi, Krups, Bosch, the mainstays of German technology. The records were kept on IBM punch cards.
So I find it puzzling to see persons of Jewish descent, who on one hand want to remember the Holocaust, but on the other hand have no problem driving BMWs, Mercedes, Audi, Porsche, making coffee in a Krups or Bosch coffee maker. They seem to easily separate these things from the deaths of our ancestors in one of the most horrific genocide's in history.
I'm not trying to make an indictment here, just a point. We all do it, we are all tied to some sort of atrocity or degradation. Martin Luther King said it best, "none of us have clean hands."
But the politically correct sentiment in West Hollywood has decided that the word "Tara" is not appropriate for use in conversation or reference. Given the city's inability to honor it's own founders, I suspect that the place will barely remember Elsie, without any reference to her beloved "Tara", or the rancho's heritage.
I guess this is the same selective mentality that makes it easy to own those implements made by the makers of the Holocaust, even if one had family members who were lost in it. I don't know if Mr. Zimmerman is Jewish, but I'm sure he has friends who are. Does he drive a German car? Does he remember the holocaust when he operates it? And if his car is not German, perhaps it's Japanese. Does he consider the atrocities of the Japanese against the Chinese, Philippinos and Koreans when he starts up his auto in the morning? Has he forgotten the rape of Nan Ging, the comfort women, etc? And if he's able to make all this okay in his mind, why the disdain for the word "Tara" (which means earth)?
Again, I'm not trying to make an indictment of either the Germans or the Japanese here, just pointing out some selective memory going on in the minds of so called "politically correct" people. Why is Elsie's name for the place, "Tara", so offensive if all of these other things are okay?
 Ed in the Old South – North Carolina. By Ed Garren. |
And to the owners of all of the imported cars in L.A., how politically correct is it to buy a product that puts American workers out of good paying jobs, the few that are left in this country? Jeff Prang pointed that out in one of his letters a few months ago. Democrats in Detroit don't buy foreign cars. So what makes it okay in LA? Why "Made in U.S.A." so offensive to these people? Particularly when so many really good products are being made here now.
None of this stuff is simple, but as always in Los Angeles, fashion dictates what is okay and what is not. It's fashionable to buy imported products, it's fashionable to bash people from "red" states, particularly if they have a drawl. So "Tara" is out, but buying Krups is in. Even if Krups made the machinery that made places like Auschwitz so efficient.
Does the word hypocrisy come to mind, or is it just thoughtlessness?
From all accounts, the city prohibited the Weisman family from developing the property, which encouraged Elsie into giving it to the city. She had no idea that her "cultural resource" would be turned into a housing project, destroying her beloved property, trees ripped out, animals displaced, house gutted, and a huge stucco monolith built around it.
Everyone has an Elsie anecdote, but I've maintained all along that if anyone knew her wishes it was her family and her neighbors on the property, all of whom have said the proposed "Laurel Place" project is an abomination and a farce. Why else would her family and close friends spend thousands of dollars to try to stop the proposed development? A housing project which destroys the property's historic integrity, destroys the very elements which brought about the Cultural Resource designation in the first place.
And now, this flap about "Tara" and it's reference to slavery. I don't think that's the issue at all. I think the real issue is that these people know they are cheating Elsie's intent, they know that their plans are going to ruin the place, that they violate her intent and wishes for the property. So in their guilt and shame they wish to erase any and all elements of Elsie, her life, her beloved "Tara" and her memory.
That's why they won't use "Tara" and they didn't think of honoring her by naming the project Weisman Place. **********************
Edward "Ed" Garren, MFT is a Family Therapist, justice activist, former West Hollywood City Council candidate, writer and sojourner. He is originally from the Tampa Bay area of central Florida. Ed has been published in the Los Angeles Times, Frontiers news magazine, and other books, including "Out of My Mind,” a pictorial memoir by Kris Nelson. He is currently working on a book about Addiction in America.
Ed Garren can be reached, even in the Red America’s wilds, at