Seed Dispersal and The Fallacy of Wish-Making

Sometimes, you get an email inviting you to something, but without saying what it is.



Sometimes, you go, and it's a bust.



Other times you end up at the circa 1923 Southern California Edison Laguna Bell Substation in the City of Commerce for adventures in wish fulfillment.



I'm a skeptic when it comes to immersive theater and interactive art. But I'll take any excuse to enter an otherwise verboten power plant.



Even if I might get electrocuted along the way.



I had no preconceptions of what I would see inside...



...only that the installation was called "Dandelions."



And appropriately, those were the first thing I saw.



Dandelions were a common occurrence on my childhood lawn, as they were, I'm sure, on many others.



I'd pluck those little puffballs, make a wish, and blow—but as far as I could tell, the wishes never came true.



I always wondered if I was wishing for the wrong thing.



But if I wished for something easier or more likely, what's the point of magical thinking? In all practicality, wouldn't I be able to just make it happen?



Well, I gave up wishing long ago and became a woman of action—doing rather than tossing pennies into fountains or searching the night sky for shooting stars. I step on every crack and went ahead and adopted myself a black cat.

But for the sake of "Dandelions," I came up with a wish—this time, one that wasn't for me, but for somebody else.



I got funneled through the distribution center of wish fulfillment...



...getting my own stemless puffball...



...to blow into the hole my wish had been assigned to.



The computer had told me my wish was a long shot. But, as one of the "staff" pointed out, all wishes were valid.



It appeared as though the blown-apart seeds actually got pumped or blown by pneumatic tubes into a machine room...



...but we were routed elsewhere...



...to a room where it seemed like the slightest thing could sabotage your wish.



And because pretty much all wishes are the same—money, love, health, success—it would be easy enough to ruin somebody else's wish, too.



But a wish can't come true if the dandelion pouf stays intact.



The seeds have to break off and disperse, one by one.



You have to blow hard, because some of those seeds have to travel pretty far in order to make your wish come true.



And the flower has to die in the process.



Some of the seeds never made it past the window.



A few clung to its edges in a final stand of civil disobedience.



We couldn't stay and wait to see what would happen to them. We had to leave before our wishes could be fulfilled.



After all, some of them are completely out of our control anyway.



And my wish was for somebody who wasn't even there. I sure hope my wish fulfillment track record improves now that the focus is off of me.

Because sometimes you have to give up on the wish that just won't come true. And you have to shift your focus to one that might.

But you can still have hope...

Related Posts:
A Missed Calling
On Settling
Getting In Touch With My Inner Sixth Grader

Photo Essay: The Town That Built The Hoover Dam

If you were going to build something big—really big—in the middle of nowhere, you couldn't expect your workforce to commute.

You'd have to build a town for them to live in—and ideally, people would want to live there even after construction had ceased.



And that's exactly what happened with Boulder City and the construction of the Boulder Dam, which was completed in 1936 and renamed the Hoover Dam in 1947.



The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation constructed employee housing—putting single dam workers in dormitories and family men in newly-constructed houses. Mid-level managers (including high-ranking employees and field engineers) ended up in stucco single-family homes, many of which were built in 1931.



Eventually, ownership of this formerly federally-controlled housing turned over to private citizens—many of whom have kept original features like bathroom tile intact.



Others have built their houses out—for example, adding a steep terraced garden and arcaded porch to a "twin" 1931 stucco home that once had the same floorplan, built for dam electrician Ervin Aril ("E.A.") Felts and his wife Macie Pynes Felts.



It was thanks to the Nevada Preservation Foundation's Home and History Tour—and its expansion from Vegas into Boulder City—that we got to take a peek inside some of the dam workers' former living spaces.



One homeowners even salvaged a stained glass window from the bar of the Boulder Hotel and put it up in a small dining area.



Although the assignment would eventually come to an end, the housing was built to be permanent—some of it quite nice, even by today's standards—as part of an ideal or "model" city.



In 1932, an Eclectic Revival-style home with decorative rowlock brick was built as "executive class" housing for U.S. Reclamation Service Engineer Rufus C. (or "R.C.") Thaxton.



Its ceiling fixtures are still original...



...and you can find an old milk door along the wall in the stairwell leading down to the basement.



The current owner has created new furniture and cabinetry made from reclaimed materials—including doors, hinges, locks, and hooks—to preserve the original character of the home while making her own mark on it.



The first private Boulder City residence—that is, not built, owned, or otherwise controlled by the U.S. government—came a year after dam construction ceased. (Though, the feds didn't relinquish control over Boulder City until 1959.)

The Spanish Colonial Revival-style home was built in 1937 for Charles (or "C.H.") Cady, who'd invested a bunch of money in creating a tourist empire surrounding the newly opened dam, but then died in 1942 before he could reap all the benefits.



Between the wood beam ceilings...



...original fireplace...



...and gasp-worthy view, this national historic landmark has a certain timeless appeal.



Perhaps more polarizing is its neighbor, the 1970 modernist retirement home of Cliff Segerblom (the Bureau's first PR photographer) and his wife, Gene Wines Segerblom.



Another private residence, it also features wood beam ceilings and that spectacular view.



But there are fewer traces of Boulder City's history as a dam workers townsite...



...despite the view of Lake Mead (a watery result of the Boulder Canyon Project) below.

From the beginning, Boulder City was designed by Dutch city planner Saco Rienk de Boer as a wholesome town—in contrast to nearby Las Vegas, which hadn't really become "Sin City" yet but was heading there. It's still one of only two Nevada cities with an anti-gaming ordinance.

The clean-living environment was an ideal in the days following the repeal of Prohibition and the years when the country was still deep in the Great Depression. To keep the dam workers sober, alcohol was banned in Boulder City—and it wasn't legalized until 1969. (Hence the lore surrounding Bootleg Canyon.)

There's a local brewpub there now, but it still seems pretty unadulterated. It's been considered one of the best cities for retirement.

You could do worse, that's for sure.

Related Posts:
Photo Essay: Hoover Dam
Photo Essay: Lake Mead Railroad Trail
Photo Essay: Lost City of the Muddy Valley