Like many Americans and Californians my family came from somewhere else. This is a photograph from 1916 of my great grandfather Norman MacDonald and my great grandmother Murdina MacDonald, shortly after they immigrated from the Isle of Lewis off the coast of Scotland to Ontario, Canada.
They
moved from the Isle of Lewis because the one patch of land he farmed could not
feed a family. Newly arrived in
Canada, they took this family portrait with their children in their best clothes:
Mary,
my grandmother, the oldest daughter -
Annabelle,
the second -
Dina
(short for Murdina), the third daughter -
Donald,
the first-born son, full name Donald MacDonald (poor kid) -
Norman,
the second son -
Baby
Peggy, who would soon die in the influenza epidemic of 1918
And
still yet to be born:
Angus,
who was in the Canadian Navy in World War II and swam away from three warships
sunk by Japanese torpedoes -
Murdo,
who was in the Canadian Royal Air force and who rode in the “death seat” as the
rear gunner in a slow moving bomber, flying raids over Europe. He was shot down and killed on his 26th
mission.
Ruth
- the ninth child, also on the West Coast now, but in Vancouver Canada.
My
grandparents endured poverty, a long trek across an ocean, the death of two
children, and a difficult life on a new continent. Yet you can see their
strength and pride in this photograph, and when things are tough for me I am
reminded of the good stock from which I come and that I have it easy compared
to them.
My
mother and father both grew up in Thunder Bay, Canada, but my mother fell in
love with California when she worked in Santa Barbara for two years as a
traveling nurse. When she stepped off the
train in January in the 1960s, she saw palm trees framed by mountains with a
dusting of snow.
Palm trees and snow at the same time? she
thought. How was that possible? She
was amazed but also felt that she had found home. She returned to Canada where
she met my father, and after ten years of marriage and three kids she finally
convinced him to move our family to San Francisco, which technically makes me a
first generation immigrant to the United Sates, and the second generation in
North America.
And,
like me, for half a century most Californians were from somewhere else,
especially in the urban centers - the Bay Area, Los Angeles, Orange County and
San Diego.
Living
in Los Angeles it’s rare to encounter a native Angeleno, and even more rare to
find someone whose parents and grandparents are from California. That’s because
from 1960 to 2010, the population of California grew 167 percent, which means
most everyone or their parents were from somewhere else.
We
all came here for that particular permutation of the American Dream called the
California Dream, and yes, it does exist.
Not to disparage any other state, but people just don’t speak of the
Carolina or Arkansas or Wisconsin Dream.
But
the California Dream has taken a hit in the last few years. Since the economic downturn life isn’t as
pleasant in California as it has been and more people have left the state than
moved here.
This
has led to other changes. The USC
Population Dynamics Research Group has come out with a new study confirming
this. For the first time in fifty
years, most people who live in California were born in California, and by 2030 two thirds of young adults will
have been born here.
I’m
not sure how I feel about the news.
Part of me breathes a sigh of relief. There are enough people here already, thank you. With fewer people coming, we may
finally be able to keep up with public needs, like rebuilding infrastructure,
and private demands, like more housing.
Then
again, I’m an immigrant and I know immigrants made California great. What will
happen if the dreamers stop coming?
I
know Silicon Valley worries that if they don’t grab the brightest engineers
from around the world they’ll just go somewhere else.
But
there may be a bigger problem than fewer engineers -- we are facing a future
with fewer children. Not only are fewer families are coming to California, but
fewer families are starting in California.
Read
this, from the same 2013 USC Populations Dynamics Research Group Study:
The number of children under age 10 living in (Los Angeles)
county is projected to drop 15 percent from 2010 to 2020, on top of last
decade’s 17-percent loss of children in that age group.
At
the same time, baby boomers are reaching retirement age. The proportion of
elderly residents in LA is expected to nearly double from 9.7 percent in 2000 to
18.2 percent in 2030, the report projected.
You can see where this is going.
California
is in debt. I am worried about our
educational system, our infrastructure, and about climate change. How will we manage? Everything will get worse before it
gets better and it will be hard to keep the dream alive.
California
is facing many struggles and we need some good immigrant stock from around the
world. We must find a way to lure smart hardworking people here, and to get
them to stay and to raise smart and hardworking future Californians.
But
how?
My
mind flips back and forth --
Flip:
It’s expensive to live here, and there are easier places to start a
business. Taxes are high. We have
tough environmental protections and regulations you don’t have to endure in
other places.
Flop:
California is still pristine because of those regulations, and those rules will
probably end up being instituted elsewhere eventually. California leads the way, which is why
it’s sometimes called a bellwether state.
Do
we lower taxes? Remove regulations? Provide incentives? Promote immigration? It’s so strange to consider any of
this, since California has never needed to do that before. The Dream itself fueled it all.
What
must change?
It
leads my mind to one thought I dare not yet discuss in this nascent blog --
Proposition 13. However, I will
raise a few questions:
You
are 60, you own your home and you pay $5000 in property taxes. If you sold your house and moved
somewhere else in California, you’d have to pay $20,000 on a new home of
comparable worth. Would you ever
move?
You
are 30 and you’ve saved up to buy your first home and you have one child and
another on the way. Someone aged
60 is finally selling their home, and you want to buy it so you can renovate it
or tear it down and start over. However, that same property will now cost you
$20,000 a year in taxes. Do you
buy or wait? Or would you want to
move to Arizona or Colorado instead?
I
won’t answer the questions, but I would love to hear your thoughts -- and also
tell me how you and your family came to California!
Some interesting links :
Here is a link to an interesting
documentary project about the changing Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los
Angeles, which epitomizes the changes California has gone and is going
through. Click and watch some cool
video.
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