In Which Nothing Happens

I live close enough to the VA hospital complex in West L.A. that when the California National Guard decided to stage a bio-terrorism exercise there, a notice got slipped under my door warning me about it. Lest I freak out when a Blackhawk helicopter flew over the apartment at 5:00 in the morning, although really, in Los Angeles having a helicopter fly over is as common as common can be. Still, the notice made it all sound awfully intriguing: "Operation Vector, a large-scale interstate and interagency exercise" that would include a simulated earthquake, then a simulated chemical attack over the Hollywood Hills. I mean hey, why watch Apocalypse Now when you can have all that military bang-bang going on in your back yard?

Alas, nothing happened. Or rather, what did happen seems to have been far enough away that I never noticed any of it. (The place is huge, so it wouldn't surprise me.) With the exercise scheduled to start at 5:00 this morning, I wandered out there around 7:00 and could find no trace of anything at all; later I took a long walk all through the complex and it was as if nothing had ever happened there at all, the place was just as it always is: busy in clusters, sleepy and quiet in others. Disappointing, really; now I'll have to go watch Robert Duvall and the helicopters after all.

Something else is worth noting, though: the VA center was created in the late 19th century as a bequest to the city from someone whose name I can't remember, under the stipulation that the land be used for the benefit of America's soldiers of any war. But now, there is a fierce local fight going on between evil developers salivating over all that open land in the middle of Los Angeles (beyond-prime real estate) and those like me who think that a promise is a promise. I'm not one to automatically inveigh against real estate developers--none of us would live in anything other than tents and caves if developers didn't develop--but this place is a bright spot in the city and it ought to stay that way. As I walked today there were open fields with lush green grass, trees and birds, bikers and joggers, the UCLA baseball team was warming up for a game against Pepperdine on the athletic field, fathers had taken their sons out to play ball on a different field, and people were golfing on a compact public course. There is a little Japanese garden out there, and of course the hospital, numerous in-patient and out-patient facilities, and residential dormitories to provide long-term care for the men and women who risked everything for us.

The VA Center is good for the soldiers, it's good for the locals, it's good for the soul of the city to continue to do what it promised to do over a century ago. Those developers should just bug off and go someplace else.